At the airport

MARIE: Apologies for the slight interruption in service – we have been away on each our long weekend trip. I went off in one direction to a conference, while Jon went off in the other direction to visit friends and family in England. As a result of good fortune and careful planning, we had flights out of Amsterdam within half an hour of each other. It felt very jet-setting to kiss my husband goodbye not at the train station, and not at passport control, but actually airside at the gate.

The trip also led me discover something new about Jon and Parkinson’s. A lot of people with Parkinson’s complain that when they are out in public, people treat them like they’re drunk. I’ve never really understood that – okay, the slurred speech that PD can cause does perhaps sound a bit drunk, but how can somebody walking towards you in the street know what your speech will sound like? And drunks don’t tend to shake and twist, do they? So although of course I believe what people say when they complain about being treated like drunks, I’ve never really understood how this came about.

But standing behind Jon in the queue for passport control, seeing him wobble up to the counter, and then watching as he swayed and gyrated while the officer checked his passport – now I know where the drunk thing comes from. It’s all about balance.

In addition to all the other things PD does, it affects “postural stability”, which is the ability to take up a posture and maintain it. People with advanced PD often fall because of impaired balance, and already Jon is finding it almost impossible to maintain balance when walking backwards. And, as I realized at the airport, he can’t stand still for even the 20 seconds it takes to get his passport checked. He was in constant motion, swaying a bit to the right, righting himself but then leaning to far to the left, bending the knees to lower his centre of gravity and regain balance, then straightening up and starting all over again with the gentle swaying. And he looked exactly like a morning drunk. It is heartbreaking to see, and to know that there is nothing I or anyone else can do to make it better.

Actually, it reminds me of our last trouser-buying expedition where I sat outside the changing rooms as Jon did battle with shoes and feet and trouser legs. Meanwhile, a much older man strode out of his changing room to confer with his wife over trousers and as a totally natural thing he did that deep knee bend that you do to check that the trouser legs aren’t too tight. Such a small thing, such a natural and familiar movement, and so far out of Jon’s reach. I felt a right idiot, coming over all emotional outside the men’s changing rooms. Jon isn’t the only one to make a spectacle of himself.