Like in story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, I often feel like two completely different people in the same body: the normal me that goes about his daily business like everyone else and, and the me that's been possessed by the evil Parkinson's.
Normal Me is around most of the daytime. He struggles with a few things in the kitchen or when he’s packing his shopping away in the supermarket, but to look at him, you wouldn’t particularly notice anything was wrong. A little stooped in his posture maybe, a little slow and with the worst handwriting you’ve ever seen. But not enough to really notice and, at a quick glance, he looks much like any other ordinary person. Normal Me is like the good Dr Jekyll.
In the evenings, Normal Me suddenly, and unpredictably, changes into Parkinson’s Me – the evil Mr Hyde
Well, Parkinson’s Me isn’t necessarily evil, but he can be very tetchy and short tempered. The problem is that Normal Me is pumped up with levodopa all day and this enables him to function relatively normally, whereas Parkinson’s Me is minimally medicated. Parkinson’s Me is a creature of the night, often writhing in bed and fequently awake in the early hours.
Parkinson’s Me is at his worst first thing in the morning when most or all of his meds have worn off. He always wakes up stiff and in discomfort, sometimes in pain too. He has a desperate urge to pee, but finds it difficult to get out of bed. When he eventually manages to stand up, he can’t walk properly. Instead he takes a slow shuffle to the bathroom, sometimes stumbling on the way, and cursing. We’ll spare you the details of the difficulties that he has in the bathroom.
When he returns to the bedroom, Parkinson’s Me takes a couple of pills and tries to get back to sleep. The next person to emerge from the bedroom is the affable Normal Me, and so the cycle repeats.
In the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the protagonist eventually runs out of the serum that turns him back into Dr Jekyll and is doomed to be the evil Mr Hyde forever. So he commits suicide at the end of the story. Fortunately I’m not at that stage yet, but perhaps eventually the medicine will stop working, and I too will be doomed - to be Parkinson’s Me all the time…
