Once more, with feeling

I've been invited to give a lecture – it on a topic I've taught before, I already have a set of power-point slides that I can re-use, and I used to enjoy standing up and talking about my research. BUT – can I still do it?

The session is 8:30 to 10:15, which means rather a lot of talking. My speech therapist and I agreed some months ago that I was ‘cured’ in terms of our treatment goals, which were to get me to the stage where I could give a 20 minute talk without freezing, stuttering or losing the plot – and do so loudly enough for an audience to hear me, and clearly enough for them to understand me.

So, a check of the resources:
1. Do I know the topic? Well, yes, I’m quite the expert even if I say so myself. Check.
2. Am I good enough at public speaking? Again, yes. I have lectured for years, have spoken at many scientific conferences, and I managed to entertain a lay audience one year at the Cheltenham Science Festival. Check.
3. Is my body up to it? This may sound really lame, but even though I normally wake at 7:00 am and take my pills immediately, it is not until around 10:00 am that I begin to feel human – and, rather importantly, safe to drive. So to get to the university in time, I will need to take my pills around 5:00 am instead. But since the pills only give me 4-5 hours of peak functioning, the very early start will mean there is a risk that I might start exhibiting symptoms before the end of the lecture. But couldn’t I just take my next dose a bit early, I hear you ask (nothing wrong with my hearing, you know). Well, the snag there is that both under and over dosing give me similar symptoms of freezing, twitching, loss of speech and tremor. So there’s no confident check in this particular box.

Am I being an old woman? Maybe – but can I involve students as guinea pigs to test how much the PD has screwed up my ability to teach? Or am I scared of failure and therefore trying to avoid finding out by not even making the attempt? It seems somehow unethical to me to subject students to me when I’m off-peak – I mean, they will presumably turn up because they feel the need to hear about the subject, so who am I to deprive them of a more functional lecturer?

Or maybe I'm just having a bad day and there is in fact not a single problem that cannot be overcome:
Against quiet speech: use a MICROPHONE.
Against difficulty in remembering words: put the text on slides.
Against tremor: avoid using a laser pointer but go for a heavy stick (which damps out the tremor).
Against slurred speech: tell the students at the beginning that I have PD, and stress that I am neither drunk nor (particularly) nervous – and invite them to tell me if they find me hard to understand.
Against a 5am start: use wife as chauffeur (though a 6am start on meds is probably still inevitable).

I'll keep you posted as to how (and if) I do.