A Rose by any other name...

Well, I knew it was a possibility; more like a probability. One thing you learn about this disease is it progresses how it does but when it comes to subtracting your capabilities, the plateau is when it happens.

The pattern is clear enough; you go along for months with abilities A-X but then some period of stress or something that keeps you overwhelmed for too long and you experience what we call a plateau. You spend too long in over-drive (for you), too long with crappy sleep, too long with uncertainty in your day, too long in some physical discomfort (case in point: year ago last summer when the AC gave out during a 120 degree heatwave. Plateau definitely happened there).

Regardless of cause, if the plateau happens and you rest and recover as best you can, you come out with abilities A-S. Maybe. The others are just gone, never to come back, not anything like they were before.

So in this case, the rest period is over, or is as good as it is going to get and some significant changes are afoot:

* Parkinson Shuffle. Before it was only under some conditions, mostly if I was in public, unsure of surroundings, etc. Now its most of the time, home, etc.

* Working or short-term memory is really, really bad now.  Not sure how much and to what degree but it absolutely is. 15 Minutes is a good time-window for me to recall stuff.  Even so I gotta keep asking the questions over and over again because I can never recall what is for dinner, what I am supposed to be doing, etc.

* Related or not but where my ability to evaluate stuff was dodgy before, it is non-existent now. I can't seem to decide anything.

* If at all possible, my sense of time is even worse.

* In general, cognitively I am an idiot more hours than I am not. Hard to put a pin in exactly what is worse but I can tell I am seriously stupid now.

* Motor skills, eye-hand coordination worse. Probably related to first item.

* Most worrisome to me it the fact that all time time now, my legs and knees feel rubbery or untrustworthy and if I don't focus hard on every act I do (walk, etc) I will fall. As soon as I feel I am losing focus (by day dreaming, etc) I find myself falling. Stay focused: no falls but constant feeling of instability. 

Thats it but....that's enough. All of this adds up to life being harder.  So this is how things are from now on....until the next plateau. Keep this in mind next time someone wonders why I like staying at home where there is peace and quiet, very predictable life. The longer I can keep up that boring predictability, the longer I hang on to what little I have left.

And so it goes....

Jeff