Faking It

I am a fake.

I have had Parkinson’s for ten years and for the past several months I’ve been pretending I do not have it. After all, since DBS I take two little pills in the morning and with the recent calibrations to my DBS, that’s all I need. No tremor. No balance problems. No muscular rigidity. No slowing muscle movements. (No brag, just facts). See, no Parkinson’s. Because I don’t have Parkinson’s I have given up many of the things that I put in place to manage my symptoms and make my life more livable. I have stopped exercising. I haven’t seen my neurologist in six months (I will go in August, though). I stopped feeling sorry for myself. And I quit finding the funny.

That’s right, if you haven’t noticed or cared, I stopped writing my blog and updating my website months ago. Writing made me feel like a fake. My biggest complaints or funniest moments are banal compared to someone experiencing the real symptoms of Parkinson’s. All of my symptoms can be blamed on age. Frequent urination, memory impairment, eye dryness/stickiness, and slow movement. While all of these are symptoms of Parkinson’s, I’ve been choosing to believe they are age-related.

I do have some bad days where I have to take a second dose of my Parkinson’s medication in the afternoon, but these are infrequent. I had one of those days recently, and it came crushing down on me - what if the tremor got worse over time and evolved into the dyskinesia like it did before? Suddenly, I realize that DBS gave me a chance to start over, but the ending might still be the same. The tremors are likely to return, and may return to where they were before DBS. Maybe/probably even worse. Just like getting it for the first time, as if once is not enough. I used to think I was lucky to be given a second chance, but now I am just faking it.