Prologue (December 2021)


I'm no stranger to long-running blogs - I've been keeping a travel blog for about 18 years, and I've kept a photodiary for just as long.  This one might be a bit different.

This blog is intended to help me on another long journey. 

In April 2022 I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.  Before jumping in at the deep end it felt like a good idea to put a little bit of context in place, and I've opted to write this entry retrospectively (in April 2022) but dated to mark the date of an initial consultation with a local GP who attempted to reassure me that probably wasn't Parkinson's but that he would refer me to the local Movement Disorder clinic (which has an email address that starts neurology.parkinsons - that's got to be a clue).

The four month gap between reassurance and diagnosis left me plenty of time to do my own diagnosis (pretty obvious) and to try any figure when I first noticed that something wasn't right.  

Pain in my right elbow? - that probably goes back a couple of years - did I put the tremor down to spending too much time carrying a camera in my right hand?  When I fell over attempting to jump down onto a Shetland beach? - I was more worried about the camera - should I have been more worried about missing my footing?  Is my gait less symmetrical than it used to be?  Should I have read more into the rather odd way I use a mouse?, was double-clicking always so hit and miss?

I'm pretty sure the clues go back at least a couple of years - I guess I just put it down to 'getting older' without thinking that there might be another rather bleaker explanation.

Todays picture - taken at Weston Turville Reservoir on 15th December 2021 - something about not being able to see the paddling that's going on under the surface.

I'm deliberately keeping this blog a bit hidden, for now at least.  I guess it's not going to be impossible to find, but I'm not planning to link it to my other blogs or to my social media accounts at the moment.  I'm guessing that you can't really hide Parkinson's in the long term, but I'm not quite ready to go public just yet.



Location: Oxford, UK

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