Wow! A lovely late Summer’s day here in Norfolk – NOT! I draw the curtains back on a wet and grey Southrepps, and when I take the dog for her first walk of the day, realise how windy it is, too! A day for staying indoors and vegetating, I think.
My wife is going over to Hevingham to help her sons clear out their workshop, garage and loft. I elect to stay here and look after the dog! I decide to spend my time knocking a couple of videos out for my YouTube channel – not DBS videos today, I’m afraid, just some mildly amusing videos that I captured of our dog on my iPhone whilst out on our walks. I am planning to script a couple more DBS videos next week, and hopefully they will be published on YouTube before too long.
Videos published on YouTube (several times, because I keep making stupid, trivial mistakes that I feel the need to correct), I time my afternoon walk to coincide with a break in the weather. I bump into someone from the village (a fellow dog walker) who I haven’t seen in ages, and he tells me he is reading (and enjoying) my blog – eeek!!! I suppose that’s something that I hadn’t really thought about (well, thought about but not worried about), although my brother (who lives in Nova Scotia) did once ask me what would happen if the drug squad raided me on the strength of my (documented) cannabis use.
<soapbox mode on>
My response was (much the same as I feel right now) that, if they really had nothing better to do, they could come and get me. It’s no longer a criminal offence (I think), but even if it were, I would still use it, because it makes life bearable. I have been completely open with my GP, my neurologist, and the entire DBS team in London about my use of the drug. They all know that it helps some people, but they are powerless when it comes to fulfilling my requests to prescribe it to me because it isn’t licensed for Parkinson’s Disease – a ridiculous state of affairs, to my mind.
<soapbox mode off>
Today is fairly uneventful, symptom wise. Nothing has changed very much since yesterday. Tremor is still much the same. Ditto dystonia. Dyskinesia has increased slightly due to my fiddling around with settings yesterday afternoon, but it hasn’t got to the stage where I’m turning my stimulator down again, so it can’t be all that bad (either that, or I’m getting used to it!). Balance much the same. Speech much the same. Mentally much the same. Not quite so tired as I have been for the last few days – good news!
I managed to prepare some vegetables for dinner without losing any fingers (bonus!) and put some chicken breasts in the oven so that, by the time my wife gets back home, dinner is ready (almost).