Downs and Ups (June & August 2025)

Take 2.  I started this post in June, but it never quite got finished (it's now August) - but it feels important to pick it up, and shake off the dust and try again.  

No Worries - Calm Evening at Sumburgh Head

In previous posts I've talked about some of this physical symptoms of Parkinson's, this is (I think) the first time I've focussed on one of my mental health symptoms.

Anxiety. 

I started writing the post just after I returned to Shetland after visiting REGEN in Boario, and seeing my (stand-in) neurologist in Oxford for my 'annual' check up.

At the check up I reported on what I can only describe as an anxiety (or panic?) attack.  

It wasn't a 'dramatic' episode but came from having a bad feeling that I'd left the cooker on when I closed up the house to head into London to catch the Eurostar to Paris.  Yes, I know everyone has worries like this - but I was getting to the stage of trying to figure out if I had time to go home, check the cooker and still catch my train to Paris.  It didn't take very long for my anxiety to escalate from picturing the cooker being on to picturing the row of fire engines that would be needed to put out the inevitable inferno (I'm not sure I can even spell catastrophising!).  I just didn't seem to be able to convince myself that, of course, I would have turned everything off, because it is just one of those things that one does automatically.  Eventually, I got to the stage of asking a neighbour (who had keys!) to go and check the cooker (and send me a picture of the cooker controls) and reassure me that everything was indeed as it should be.

The neurologist suggested that some new (additional) meds might help to calm the anxiety, but also suggested that 'talking therapy' might help too.

Fast forward to the day I was packing up to drive North to Shetland.  Car was loaded, cooker had been checked. And doubled checked.

All was going well until I got about 100 miles from home, when I could suddenly picture the back door swinging open (which quickly escalated to picturing the house being pilfered).  I carried on to my first hotel stop, getting increasingly anxious and distracted, again doing the 'returning home to check' calculation, and eventually resorting to asking the neighbours to go in and check that things were as they should be. Again. Sorry.

At this point the suggestions from the neurologist had reached my GP, who had issued a new prescription and also recommended trying talking therapy.  Eventually I got to the stage of deciding to try talking therapy with meds kept as a back up option (I've read the side effects list, and I really am not keen to add another long term drug to my collection if I can avoid it). 

This felt a good way forward.  And an initial discussion was set up with the relevant organisation. 

Then the wheels started coming off - the first outfit I'd been referred to decided (eventually after several phone calls) that I'd be best helped by some one else (I'm deliberately keeping the organisations a bit vague). They then decided that I needed to be referred back to another neurologist before anything else could happen.  Cue an appointment sometime next year.  That sound you can hear in the background is a can being kicked further down the road.

That all happened several weeks ago, so what's happened since then?

Since then I've had a long walk on my local beach every morning. And spent a lot of time watching and photographing the various seabirds that breed on the cliffs at the south end of Shetland.  And those combined with the low stress (mostly simple?) lifestyle on Shetland (that I seem to wind up talking about on every blog post) has certainly kept the anxiety at bay (even if do still sometimes need to check the cooker when I go out). 

This beach is made for walking (Quendale Bay)

Let's see how it goes when I pack up the Shetland house to head to Oxford, or pack up the Oxford house to head back to Boario...