Fun with pills

Last week I visited my neurologist – who looks like she’s 17, but that’s probably just because I’m an old fart. I complained that my Parkinson’s disease has progressed a bit so I now have ‘sticky’ hands and feet (and have accused my poor wife of coating the floors in treacle), so she upped my dosage of Sifrol to 16 pills per day – from three lots of four to four lots of four pills. Plus I’m taking up to six pain pills per day as three lots of two. It’s almost impossible to keep track of what to take when – I’ve set the alarms on my mobile phone, but as the phone sits either at home in the charger (which, handily, is two floors away from my study) or at work in my jacket pocket (i.e. slung over a chair in a different room), either no one hears it OR it goes off directly in my ear – and bloody loud that can be. Marie keeps trudging up the stairs with the phone for me to sort out (because it might have been a call) which tends to annoy both of us.

We are both going a bit crazy with lack of sleep. We’ve got separate bedrooms now or neither of us would ever sleep at all, but with the doors open so we can still wake each other up when getting up for a wee, or to let the cat in and out (and in and out and in and out), or when my insomnia wins and I switch on night-time radio. On top, I’m going a bit mad with the back pain (again!) and, if I’m honest, with life. So what am I doing to fight the PD? Nothing much, just having a therapeutic moan – it’s a carbon-neutral thing to do.

Slightly less good for the old carbon footprint is living in a different country from my children and grandchildren. We’re off to the UK next week to see them, and to get one of my teeth fixed (we have a serious down on the local dentist, so we try to go when abroad). I’m almost certain that more than one visit is needed, which will give me another excuse to see the offspring. Although we’re only staying for one night this visit, we have booked our luggage in as hold baggage to make life easier, and are paying extra for the priviledge (cash-rich, health-poor). So a trip to the supermarket is in order to fill up the bag for the return journey. We’ll stock up on the necessities of expat life: crumpets, pork pie, bacon, bisto and marmite (the marmite is there mainly to annoy Marie who thinks its is disgusting, but I like it). We’re taking the kids a book from our by now extensive library about PD – hopefully it will do more good than harm.