Summer Update (August 2024)

The story so far.

Summer 2021. Fell over a couple of times, noticed a tremor in my right hand.

December 2021. Self-diagnosed Parkinson's Disease.

April 2022. Diagnosis confirmed.

April 2023. First visit to REGEN

February 2024. Started taking PD medication. 

August 2024

Medications working well. Since the last update I've spent a month travelling in northern Norway (by boat, train and bus) and have spent the last two months in the Shetland house mostly photographing puffins at the south end of the Shetland mainland.

The motor symptoms of PD are generally under control. I do feel stiff early in the day until the morning meds have kicked in (I and my PD nurse have a plan to address this), my hand tremor does occasionally interfere with my photography (I can't always press the shutter button as quickly as I'd like to capture action shots) and computer mouse control is sometimes frustrating (don't even mention double-clicking). 

The non-motor symptoms are a bit harder to quantify. I do periodically feel that there is a bit of 'brain fog' about, things that I think should be obvious are sometimes challenging to grapple with.  And I do think I have more 'apathy' days than I've had in the past, and on these days it can be hard work getting on with the things on my To Do list (or even writing the To Do list).

The motor symptoms seem to be mostly (at this stage at any rate) addressable using physical / medicinal / technological solutions.  The non-motor symptoms not so much.  For me the mental symptoms are best addressed by keeping things simple and by not 'overloading' the day.

The next step is packing up the Shetland house and heading south for a few days to Oxford, then on south by bus and train to Turin and to Boario for another REGEN session (this time for two weeks rather than the one week visit in the Spring).