Today I have an appointment with the DBS nurse at the NHNN in London, so my wife and I have a quick breakfast, tea/coffee and are on the 10.07am train from Gunton to London Liverpool Street.
We arrive at the hospital bang on time, and I’m soon having my neurostimulator reprogrammed. The nurse sends me away to have a cup of coffee and see how the new settings are, so we go to visit my friend (who had his DBS operation last Tuesday) and chat to him for a while whilst the new settings “bed in”. My friend is looking extremely well and seems very happy with the outcome (so far). I’m less happy with the new settings, so we return to the DBS nurse, and she has another go. My wife and I wander down to one of the hospital canteens, where we meet up with London artist Martha Orbach to talk about the Parkinson’s/DBS awareness project that she is working on. It all sounds very interesting, and Martha has plenty of questions for me to answer about PD, DBS and my reactions to them – hopefully my answers will help shape her work.
My latest settings seem to be okay (give or take a smattering of tremor and dyskinesia – it always takes a little time for new settings to settle in) so we say goodbye to Martha, and head off on the underground to Oxford Circus, where I treat my wife to a slap-up meal at McDonald’s. We walk to the blues bar in Soho for a beer and some live music to pass the time until our train back to Norfolk at 8.30pm