Off on tour

My daughter and baby grandson visited last week (hence too much excitement to find time to blog – sorreee). It gave me a real boost to have them here. Not that we actually did much as such, other than a few walks and meals, but that is how I like it best: behaving like we have all the time in the world even if we live hundreds of miles apart. It was particularly good to be able to demonstrate that although Parkinson’s is obviously not going to go away, I am a lot better now than I was last time I saw my daughter.

Drugswise, I have now been Sifrol-free for three weeks and have, I think, just about found the right dose of Sinemet (proper L-dopa). And the change has worked wonders both physically and cognitively. I’m not back to my old self from before the disease set in, but I am at a level that can deliver a perfectly acceptable quality of life. And it’s not just me saying that, either. I had another of my regular assessments by the works doctor, who saw a great deal of improvement. He suggested occupational therapy might be a good idea, and I agree absolutely. Although the idea of retirement at 55 has its temptations, I suspect that doing something useful is actually better for the soul.

Somewhat disappointingly, though, it turns out that the doctor thinks the various tasks I have already devised for myself to do at home constitute sufficient occupational therapy for now. Oh well – I guess the only thing work would be able to suggest would be editing scientific papers for colleagues who need their English checking, which would be neither particularly interesting nor stressful. BTW, since I was in the building anyway, I poked my head round my old door and found that my desk has already been reassigned to someone else. Is that some kind of heavy hint?

Anyway, I am in fact pretty busy at home this week. We’re off on a 3-week holiday this weekend and there is a whole list of things to do before we leave. I promised to write some simple software and have just one last bug to fix before I can deliver (which will be a small triumph, considering my failure with another simple programming task earlier this year). It’s for a study where we measure reaction times with and without a background aroma which is a bit too close to aromatherapy for my comfort, actually. I mean, how open a mind can you keep before your brain falls out?

Also, I foolishly agreed to review a scientific paper. This is normally a simple task: either respond that YES, this is quality work that should be published forthwith or NO, this is derivative rubbish. Unfortunately, while the paper I’ve been given appears to be okay scientifically, the English is so abysmal that it is backbreaking work to suss out exactly what the authors mean. Until I’ve translated the thing into something more readily comprehensible I cannot be sure which way my thumb should point.

And I have to write a 4-page potted autobiography for our shrink, who we saw for the first time two weeks ago. The referral we had from our GP stated that the aim was to make life with PD liveable, and that strikes me as a fine ambition. One early hurdle – or perhaps the major, or even only hurdle – is to reconcile the diametrically opposite ways that Marie and I each deal with and react to my PD. To which end he has asked us each for a short history of how we became the people we are today. How does one fit a life onto 4 pages? My work CV alone runs to 18 pages. Well, I suppose I could leave out the dull bits, but then how would I fill the other 3 pages? No seriously, there must be 4 pages worth of almost interesting stuff in 55 years of life – ‘your mother did what?!? No wonder you’re messed up!’

Last but by no means least, I have to pack. We’ll be travelling through Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore. Now, according to CNN’s weather forecast, most of Southeast Asia is under water, suffering the worst floods for many years, so I expect humid and muddy and frequent changes of clothes. We’ll be on a tour with up to 10 other tourists and I also can’t help but worry that I might hold everyone up as I struggle in and out of car seats or delay morning departures because the drugs haven’t kicked in enough to allow me to get dressed. However, I suspect this could be my basic glass-half-empty approach kicking in and that in fact I will have rather a brilliant time. I’ll be back again to tell you about it in the beginning of December.