I'm not pregnant, I just have Parkinson's

JON: I’m fat. For the past 30 years or so, I’ve maintained a constant weight – around 80 kg, not fat and not thin, just convex enough to be cuddly. It never seemed to matter what or how much I ate or drank, my trousers always fitted without additional engineering such as belts or braces. Possibly I was one of those lucky people who fidget away any excess calories without even thinking about it, and certainly without thinking about exercise.

But now I’m fat. Not slightly overweight, but FAT. Actually, PD is supposed to make you thin as you shake, rattle and roll your way through life and dribble out half the food you try to eat. My problem seems to be that my medication is working rather too well at the moment

The burning (BBQing?) question is: how did I get from there (a handsome well-proportioned figure of a man) to here (a fat git with braces and a potbelly). One way to look at it is that I fought anorexia, and won. My first symptom was back pain which was treated with morphine which reduced my appetite – so during that period all I ate had to be high in calories because it was so low in quantity. Even so, I began to loose weight, so much in fact that my trousers became loose and I had to learn to keep a hand in one pocket to prevent serious trouser malfunction.

Trouble is, once we had the pain under control and the correct medication for the Parkinson’s, my appetite came back but I didn’t change my diet, or not quickly enough. At first this seemed a good thing as I grew back into my old trousers. But my appetite has just increased and increased and increased, possibly because of the PD drugs which are known to mess with people’s lusts so some become gamblers, others sex maniacs or shopaholics. Me, I’ve just become permanently hungry, and trousers have become a perennial problem. Once, after friends had cooked us a lovely dinner, I was hungry again within minutes and actually asked if they happened to have any cheese about the place! Marie was mortified.

Now one size of trousers is very, very tight and makes sitting down difficult, while the next size is too loose and won’t stay up. So, going for comfort, I experiment with belts and braces. The problem is that the belt buckle traps itself under the great abdominal bulge where it feels very uncomfortable. The other option is braces, but get them too tight and they pull down on the shoulder so you feel like you’re carrying a heavy rucksack (or size EE silicone breasts, perhaps). And just to add insult to injury, I can’t get a belt through the loops on the trousers without Marie’s help, nor can I fix my own braces to my trousers unaided.

I understand the appropriate expression is that inside every fat man, there’s a thin man shouting for more cake…