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12-13-2007 Jim Atwell Anne's right, of course. (I always take her insights seriously, even if it sometimes takes me days to admit agreement.) It's my plan, then, to report to you occasionally, but not so often as to change this column's tone - scout's honor! Anyway, here's the news, plainly stated: I've been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. You know, I don't much like seeing those words in type. But that's my status. I have a progressive, degenerative disease. It's incurable. Parkinson's will share my body and shape my life for the rest of my days. But it won't become my life. Not if I can help it. Some background: The first sign showed up in spring while Anne and I were in England and aboard a southbound BritRail train. We were settling in, catching our breath, after mad dashes to make connections. Arriving from Liverpool in London's Paddington Station, we'd had to rush across the city on the Underground, surfacing at vast Victoria Station, and we'd then run to board a train for Chichester. We'd clambered aboard, stowed our bags. Now would come an untroubled 90-minute ride south to a beautiful cathedral town and our friends' home. As we sat in the train carriage, congratulating ourselves for making the links, we both noticed that my righthand fingers were trembling. I spread them stretched them, rested the hand on my knee; but the tremors continued. "Too much running for an old man," I joked, and we both laughed. But then a man sitting in front of us stood up and turned to face us. I'm guessing he was a doctor. "Sorry to eavesdrop, friends, but I overheard what you're discussing." Then he looked steadily at me. "Don't ignore what your hand is doing. You get that checked as soon as you go home." And of course I did, especially since the tremors recurred several times before we were back in Fly Creek. And with them came an increase of some other oddities I'd been half-noticing for months. I'd gone stumble-footed and was regularly catching my right foot on carpet edges. I was touching walls and doorframes for balance. And my walking was sometimes like a sailor's new to shore leave, one who is still moving as if he's dealing with a rolling deck. "Sea legs," the Navy calls it. On a first visit to my Bassett prime-care doctor, I laid out the symptoms, and he ran a series of simple in-office tests. Two weeks later I was back again and, at the doctor's suggestion, had brought Anne along. She confirmed the symptoms that she had watched with growing concern. My doctor booked me for an MRI and sent me to a neurologist. Across two visits, the neurologist gave me more tests, including walks up and down his hallway. "Your stride has shortened," he said, "and your arms aren't swinging as you walk." More tests followed and then a diagnosis. It is Parkinson's. And what's that? Here's my present understanding: Mine isn't a new brain. In fact, it's long out of warranty, and replacement parts just aren't available. Well, one part of my brain's original equipment, now almost 70 years old, has been slacking off in making dopamine. That's a secretion that both stimulates and controls my body's movement. Reduced dopamine first causes tremors, unsteadiness, and slowed physical response. What can follow is grimmer yet: spasms throughout the body, speech impairment, and dimmed thought. I've lived all my private and public life through language; those last two points really haunt me. And here's a kicker: By the time that the first visible signs of Parkinson's appear, the disease may have been making progress for years. At diagnosis, dopamine production may already have dropped by as much as 80 percent. So here I am, in the first stages of quickly developing effects, and also just starting to deal with what they mean. In itself, Parkinson's isn't a fatal disease; it just kills off many capacities that make for an active, self-sufficient human. As I said, what presently scares me most is the thought of impaired speech and, worse, a feeble mind. If the latter takes place, I wonder, will I realize it? But I do have a canary in the mineshaft: this column. If it becomes a muddle, let me know. The scariness centers, not on mortality, but on being helpless. Mortality is, after all, a given. Some grim philosopher said, "Every life is a voyage that ends in shipwreck." Right. Some of us settle steadily lower in the water till it pours over the gunnels and down we go. Others end faster - their hulls are stove in by a figurative reef and they join Davy Jones in a flash. I've always figured I was in the second group. Traditionally, men in my family live into their 70s and then are poleaxed by a fatal coronary or stroke. That's a tradition I'd like to continue. But here's a lucky irony. Because I'm getting the disease so late in life, odds are that something else will drop me before Parkinson's worst tolls take hold. For such an outcome I humbly pray. Amen. OK, this subject is a downer. No more on it for a month or so, until after I've been to the Parkinson's clinic down at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. My Bassett neurologist, bless him, is arranging that visit. Which inspires a final comment: People who grouse about Bassett likely haven't doctored elsewhere. So they don't know that Bassett is a stand-out, a treasure. Read about Jim Atwell's new book at JimAtwell.com. |
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