Archive for January, 2010


I Rarely Dream About Having PD. But…
Written by Bill Schmalfeldt
Sunday, 31 January 2010 10:27

Evil Nurses are Calling Me a FAKER!!!

It’s an odd thing.  When I have one of my bizarre, vivid dreams, I rarely dream about having Parkinson’s disease.  I’m usually either back in the Navy, or traveling somewhere, or in Japan, or conversing with dead relatives who are, suddenly, not dead anymore.

Last night, I dreamed about having PD.

I was in a hospital being tested, and the doctor asked me to sit on the edge of my bed and lean forward.  I did so and fell forward, smacking my right cheek on the cold tile floor.

“AHA!” a nurse shouted!  “That SOUND he made right before he fell.  It PROVES he’s FAKING his Parkinson’s!”

I asked her what the hell she was talking about, but she started walking down a hallway and the rest of the doctors and such just dispersed.  I followed her and shouted…

“I’m going to report you to the nurse supervisor!”

She turned around and pointed to her ID badge, which clearly said “Nurse Supervisor.”

“Well, I’ll report you to YOUR supervisor, then!”

She gave me a dismissive wave and walked away.

That’s when I woke up.  And it took me three tries, using my walker, to get out of bed.

Still angry at the nurse in my dream, I muttered to myself, “Fake THIS, bitch!”

Then, I went and made coffee.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 11:59
Facts About Being 10 Years Post-Diagnosis
Written by Bill Schmalfeldt
Saturday, 30 January 2010 01:49

Some items of note that seem appropriate for my 10-year anniversary as a person with Parkinson’s disease.

1.  Ten years after diagnosis, those with PD are 20 times more likely to experience a hip fracture compared to age- and sex-matched control groups.

2.  Regarding Parkinson’s disease dementia:  The dementia usually begins about ten years after diagnosis.”

3.  Regarding balance issues:  ”Hoehn and Yahr were careful to point out that the stages were a general guide and that there will always be exceptions. They identified the impairment of the righting reflex (Stage III) as the point at which the disease became disabling. They found that, after five years, 25% of the people they studied had balance difficulties, had progressed further still or had died. From five to ten years, the proportion increased to around 63% and by 10 to 14 years that percentage became 80%.

4.  MORE cheery news!  “About one-third of Parkinson’s disease sufferers eventually show signs of dementia. The disease lasts an average ten years and ultimately results in death usually by an infection or aspiration pneumonia.”

5.  And MORE!  “One percent of persons over age 50 have Parkinson’s disease, and two-thirds become severely disabled within the first ten years of the illness. ”

6.  “According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, in the early years symptoms can be barely noticeable. Even if they are, medication can be very effective at keeping them under control and preventing them from interfering with a person’s day to day activities. Unfortunately, the effects will worsen each year, and in five to ten years they usually get to a point where daily life is disrupted — even with medication.”

7.  “Thus, while these treatments generally provide excellent results for 2-5 years, quality of life for Parkinson’s disease patients becomes increasingly poor 5-10 years after diagnosis. Symptoms that become increasingly problematic with disease progression include inconsistencies in motor control (response fluctuations), gait and balance abnormalities, cognitive loss, hypophonia and dysphagia.”

I guess that’s why I’m in such a cheerful mood today.

At least there’s CAKE!

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 10 February 2010 07:40
Doggie Gitmo Reopened
Written by Bill Schmalfeldt
Saturday, 30 January 2010 12:27

It was a noble experiment.  But it turns out that Doggie Gitmo is a necessity.

As we’ve discussed in the past, we let both doggies in to the bedroom with us at night.  Raven, the border collie, generally gets right down to sleep.  Shiloh, our silly 3-year old German Shepherd, generally feels the need to dink around for awhile before settling down.  Generally, she enjoys crawling — commando style — from the foot of the bed, under the covers.  If you pull back the covers for her, she looks at you like you’re spoiling her fun.

Last night was the final straw.  Shiloh was banished from the bedroom after crawling out from under my covers, ignoring me when I called her back to bed, and then nosing a just-fallen-asleep Gail in the back of the head with her cold, wet nose.

Gail got up at about 12:45 am to go potty.  When she gets up for a potty run, she gives the dogs a chance to “use the yard.”  Shiloh didn’t need to.  She had already used the carpet.  This was the second time in as many nights that she befouled the carpet.

So, tonight and from now on, Shiloh will join us when we go to bed.  If she settles down and goes to sleep… fine.  If she does not, then it’s off to Doggie Gitmo where she can sleep on a nice comfy pad in the kitchen.

You can’t treat these serial floor poopers like regular doggies.  You gotta have a SPECIAL confinement for ‘em!

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Last Updated on Friday, 26 February 2010 02:03
My Parkinsonian Decade
Written by Bill Schmalfeldt
Saturday, 30 January 2010 09:04

It was 10 years ago, January 30, 2000.  I was driving on Alligator Alley from Miami to Naples, Florida, trying to let it all sink in.

A doctor — a preeminent one in the world of movement disorders — had just diagnosed me with Parkinson’s disease.  He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s not a death sentence, it’s a life sentence.”  He gave me a sampler pack of Mirapex and a prescription for more when I got home.

My eyes focused on the road, I couldn’t even hear the music on the radio.

“Parkinson’s disease.  Well, it’s official.”

We had expected this would be the diagnosis.  From that day in November when a neurologist at a Naples hospital told me the tests showed no tumor, no stroke, but the way I walked and reacted to other tests indicated PD, we were pretty sure this would be the result.

Still.  Now it was official.

The doctor who broke the news explained that it was very early in the disease process, and that I likely had a number of “good years” ahead of me.  How many?  “No way to say for sure.  It’s different for everyone.”

As the Everglades whizzed by on the left and right of the car, I did a survey of my current symptoms.  The cramping, the dropping of stuff with my right hand, the occasional difficulty finding the right word.  I tried to think ahead, wondering what the future would be like for me.  Surely they’d find a cure for this thing by the time I would be disabled by it, right?  I mean, all this new stuff with embryonic stem cell research and all… whoever wins the 2000 election will SURELY allow federal funding to continue and they’ll HAVE to have a cure for this thing five years from now, ten at the outside…

Well…

Ten years.  And the science has advanced.  Not as far as it might have, given President Bush’s bowing to superstition and the eight years we wasted by not funding ESCR.  But there’s been Deep Brain Stimulation, which I had in 2007.  It only affects the areas that are also helped by levodopa/carbidopa, so it does nothing for my gait or balance, or the onset of dementia that I feel is beginning to insidiously creep into my frontal lobes…  But as I said in an article in the July 2009 US News and World Report Online, I have no way of knowing how much worse I’d be if I did NOT have the DBS.

Ten years.  Zipping across Alligator Alley, Parkinson’s was a concept.  A thing I knew that I had.  But I had no idea.

No idea.

Ten years.  Now I can’t walk outside without a walker or a cane and my wife’s hand to hold onto.  I can’t close my eyes when I kiss her because I’ll fall backwards if I do.  I have to take tiny, baby steps or I’ll lose my balance.  My libido is gone, we have to sleep in separate beds because of the REM Sleep Disorder that comes with PD, my face shows little to no emotion, my voice is getting breathy and hoarse and when I DO talk, I have to sometimes stumble and fumble my way through a sentence, going back to correctly pronounce words, and ensure I’m making sense.  I can no longer drive the car, I’m having problems swallowing food, my nose runs like a faucet from the moment I get up until the moment I go to bed, I have to sit down to take a shower, I’ve had “accidents” in the realm of “continence”, it’s difficult to focus on work or anything else, I get the “stares”, I’m repeating myself a lot, I freeze when I walk, and my chest is congested nearly every evening.

Sorta makes a feller wonder what the NEXT ten years is gonna be like.

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 2 March 2010 10:40
They Won’t Do THAT Again…
Written by Bill Schmalfeldt
Friday, 29 January 2010 04:26

I love it.

The GOP House Leadership invited President Obama to come speak with them at their retreat in Baltimore today.  They promised to be all respectful and stuff and not hurt his feelings or get in his face.  They even agreed to let the TV cameras roll as they engaged the President in a question and answer session.

I, for one, will be VERY surprised if they ever — EVER — do that again!

According to Think Progress…

“Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder. “Debating a law professor is kind of foolish — the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama’s weakness — his penchant for nuance — into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president.”

He SPANKED them.  He pulled down their pants and, on Live TV, SPANKED them!

SNAP!  As Think Progress explains…

Every single House Republican voted against the stimulus package, but as ThinkProgress has documented, many have gone on to tout the benefits it is having in their respective districts. For instance, Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) sent multiple press releases publicizing “imperative” stimulus funds awarded to his state, without mentioning where the money had come from. In December, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) called the stimulus a “large-scale failure,” only to praise a stimulus-funded program as “critical” a few weeks later. Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) sent two press releases out on December 16th — one saying the stimulus had “failed” and the other hailing $1,044,140 in stimulus money for the Carroll County school system.

It was such a BRUTAL spanking that Faux News CUT AWAY from it, leaving CNN and MSNBC to cover the President schooling the GOP, calling out the House Leadership — WITH THE HOUSE LEADERSHIP SITTING THERE — about the difference between governing and campaigning.

Talking Points Memo has more.

Later on, Obama also said how health care reform had been demonized by the right, despite support from a wide variety of people such as Republican former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. “Now you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and certainly you don’t agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that’s not a radical bunch,” said Obama. “But if you were to listen to this debate, and frankly how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot — (scattered laughter, stray applause) — I mean, that’s how you guys presented it.”

SPANK!  SPANK!  SPANK!

Again, from TPM.

At one point, Obama was asked whether he had time for more questions. “You know, I’m having fun, this is great,” Obama responded.

The combativeness continued, during a question with a very lengthy preface about spending, from Rep. Jeb Hensarling. Obama interrupted him during the preface, and also got his name wrong. “Jim (sic), I know there’s a question in there somewhere,” said Obama. “Because you’re making a whole bunch of assertions in there, half of which I disagree with, and I’m having to sit here listening to it. At some point I know you’re gonna let me answer it.”

HAW!  Barack!  WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN???

This became what could be the first publicly-held President’s Question Time, and Obama was quick on his feet. Will something like this happen again?

Oh, I doubt it.  I doubt it very much.  They may not be the sharpest doorknobs in the hardware store, but the GOP would be UNIQUELY ill-advised to let President Obama spank them in public like that again!

But, ooooooh…  It was a MARVELOUS thing to behold!

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Last Updated on Friday, 12 February 2010 04:02
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