| Parkinson's
Disease Awareness Week: April 7th - 12th 2003 |
Can you remember that dreadful joke people
used to play at school when they asked 'Are you a PLP?' if you said 'Yes', they regarded
you as a Public Leaning Post, and promptly did so! If on the other hand you said 'No',
they mocked you for not being a Public Living Person. Whatever happened, you could not
win. It is much the same if you are a PWP. You know in your heart of hearts that you
cannot win once the neurologist has pronounced you as "a Person With
Parkinson's". When mine was diagnosed in 1988, I held a junior management post in
Barclays' Bank, for whom I had worked in various Norfolk branches since 1966. At that time
it was a relatively mild form of P D, but I always knew that it was a disease that
steadily worsened. For many months, somtimes years, the disease is stable, and then
unexpectedly, there is a downward slide to the next plateau, and you have to readjust. I
accepted early retirement on health grounds in October 1995. Perhaps the biggest problem I
have had with Parkinson's was in 1998, when for almost the first time, my legs started
"freezing" - my feet refuse to move. When this happens, if the rest of my body
decides to carry on moving forward anyway, the result is that I end up as an undignified
heap on the floor. At the suggestion of my doctor and the occupational therapist, I tried
wearing kneepads, but could not get on with them, so naturally my knees have suffered
most, but I have also managed to dislocate a finger, and cut my head - on the first day of
our holiday that was. In order to prevent falls whenever possible, the first step was to
overcome the pride, which said "You don't need a walking stick, you are only
49". The reality was that a stick (or two) helps a great deal, and I swallowed my
pride and bought some. Now you will hardly ever see me out without them. But that is not
the whole story. Not infrequently I will go to, say, church or a meeting, shuffling along
the pavement as I do at bad times, and afterwards go striding home, only to realise when
half way there that I have left my stick behind! It is a condition which is frighteningly
present one day, one hour, mystifyingly absent at other times, with no rhyme nor reason
which I can pin down as to the cause of the 'on' and 'off' periods. I often say, only half
jokingly that I do not walk with Irene any more. On good days I stride out, ten metres in
front, on off days I shuffle ten metres behind. Two tricks I use to try to beat it at its
own game. One is to lift my knees abnormally high, as if climbing stairs: in fact to
pretend to be climbing stairs, an activity that seems unaffected by this strange
condition. The other is to concentrate solely on walking: my brain has, in effect
forgotten how to walk, and provided I tell it what to do ("left, right; left,
right") I am usually OK. But if I have to do something else, something else quite
straight-forward and normal, such as to talk, or to manoeuvre out of the way of somebody
else who has the temerity to walk on the pavement at the same time as me, then my brain
"forgets" to walk, and ... another one bites the dust. I have often gone out
into town, marching up the road only to find two minutes later I can hardly put one foot
in front of the other. Yes, I suppose I do find that frustrating at times, but overall I
am so overwhelmingly grateful to my former employers for 29 years, Barclays Bank, for
granting me early retirement that I do not let it get me down. I am just determined to
enjoy this wonderful opportunity that I have to do some of the things that I want to do,
and to do them with my family, and to do them at a relatively young age, that there does
not seem to be much time to sit around and mope (but do they appreciate it as much as I
do?) What of the future? I just intend to carry on writing and to enjoy life as it comes,
and if (as has happened on occasions) that entails ending up in a heap on the floor of
Budgens or of Darrens Newsagents, then so be it: if that is the price for early
retirement, then I for one will pay it (almost) gladly.
Terry Beckett. Cromer & District Branch, Parkinson's Disease Society. 01263 823282 |
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