Still fighting my way back.

Hi, We’ve made a lot of progress, completed a few articles, and am working with my assistant Tess to finish my second Book of Books – but the blog is aloost defeating me. The changes in my voices’ pitch and volume throughout the day are simly too much for the dictation programs I’ve tried so …

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Complicated Good News

The terrible thing about Parkinson’s is that it is a one-way ratchet. From the moment the first symptoms start, its advance is slow and relentless, from when you just have a little tremor or lurch and are just about normal. “Progress” has begun. When the slide starts the slope more steeply, you can no longer …

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Update

I can only say things are GOOD- not “perfect”, whatever that means. In the morning I often feel “normal”, i.e., how I feel I remember from 6 – plus years ago; I often hit a wall by 5 PM. It is not bad, and getting better as we learn how to adjust my machine… I …

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Home at last…

I am home, the op was a success, and I am fine. Many thanks for every good thought and prayer. The battery goes in a week from tomorrow, and the programming a week after that. Only physical effect was a lingering headache where AIR got into my brain… really. The grinding when they drilled into …

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Countdown

As many of you know, at 6 AM on Monday, Agust 10,  I go “under the knife”  for the Direct Brain Stimulation operation— well, more like the drill, sitting up, awake if not wide awake (6 AM at University Hospital in Albuquerque means leaving here before 4 AM, and I don’t think that will be …

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Deep Brain

The date for operation if all goes well is 10 August. Wish me luck, say a prayer, raise a glass, whatever your style. I am more than ready…

Neurology Blog

My post is up at UNM Health Sciences Center Blog. Excerpt: “It is part of the proper definition of Parkinson’s Disease that Parkinson’s is a “progressive” neurological disease. As I am a writer and work with words every day, I know exactly what the sentence means and why it is phrased that way; it describes …

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Neuro blog post

My blog for the UNM Health Services site should be up soon here— perhaps in a day or two. It begins with my detststion of the term “progressive” as in “progressive disease”: ” It is part of the proper definition of PD: Parkinson’s is a “progressive” neurological disease. as I am a writer and work …

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Brave Friends and “Progressive” Diseases

As some know, it makes me irrritable when I hear degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s described as “progessive”– only for the disease, as my friend Emily says. Yet progress still does happen. My friend Dutch Salmon has had our mutual condition for about two years longer than I have, and he has had a hard time …

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