A year ago today I was having my Deep Brain Stimulation operation, so Happy 1st Anniversary! I’ve stuck a bottle of bubbly in the fridge for when my wife gets home from work, and there’s always the possibility that a beer (or two) will be cracked open, too. The operation took a little while to recover from, but even the recovery period was better than the twelve months before my surgery, when I was referred to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery to have my suitability for DBS assessed.
Even though I had (by this time) discovered that cannabis could help to control my symptoms, the relief provided by my DBS has been a miracle for me. It is good to have my tremor under control (mostly) without having to think about medicating myself. When I do medicate (with cannabis – still not taking any prescription Parkinson’s drugs) there isn’t the same sense of urgency that there used to be, because when tremor does break through it is (generally) just a shadow of its former self.
Having said that, today my tremor is breaking through quite strongly in my left leg. It is (most likely) because I’m still tired from tiling the bathroom on Sunday and Monday, but I am considering adjusting my neurostimulator to see if I can contain it without provoking any side effects. I’ll wait another couple of hours before deciding because it seems to be getting better as the day wears on – this morning my left leg was having a proper dance, but now it’s more of a gentle tap-tap-tap on the floor. Dystonia in my right foot is present, but not bothering me enough to consider increasing the voltage on my right hand side – dyskinesia is also present (but manageable) in my right arm, and I definitely don’t want to cause a flare up of that!
I’m walking quite woodenly when I take the dog for her walks today, and I have to make a conscious effort to stop leaning forward and to lift my feet a little higher.
I had intended to do some more tiling in the bathroom, but I’m feeling pretty whacked. So, I thought I’d just cut some tiles ready for sticking to the walls, but what I ended up doing was a little planning – drawing lines on the walls so that I know where my tiles need to be placed, and calculating the number of tiles required to finish the job (to ensure that I have purchased a sufficiency, which I have).