Life With Parkinson's in my 40's- #17 Excerpts from my story

I was waiting in a sea of orange chairs with people attached to them. I was in my least favorite place in all the world; the Department of Motor Vehicles. My nerves were shouting at me. Was I shaking more than usual? Was that man sitting across the aisle of chairs staring at me? On droned the female computer voice announcing what number could be helped at window #11. My number was very far off. I had come to this awful place to renew my drivers license. I was very forgetful these days. I had been in a pizza parlor a few days earlier buying dinner, trying to hide my shaking hands from the clerk, when he said suddenly,
"Do you know your drivers license is expired?"
He had looked at it briefly to verify my identity and thought it was really funny that it was expired. I couldn’t believe I had let my license lapse. So here I sat. I had to take a written test and an eye test, the usual. What horrified me was the paragraph on the back of the renewal application. Do you have Parkinson’s Disease? I didn’t hesitate for a minute with an answer. No! If I was being dishonest in my answer then so be it. I would have my license revoked forever, quick as lightening, if I answered yes. I had a family to taxi. No one else would do my shopping. I was forty two years old for crying out loud. How could I have Parkinson’s?! I wanted to scream. No! No was the answer. Number D49 can be helped at Window 14 came the eerie female voice that was not attached to a body. I double checked the monitor on the wall. There was my number. I slowly approached window #14. My heart was pounding. Was I limping? I straightened up as good as I could and tried to smile, a huge task. The clerk barely looked at me. He looked very tired and overworked. I went through the motions and followed his instructions. Soon I was standing with my feet covering the red feet on the floor and flash went the camera before I could prepare my face to smile.
"You’re done. You’ll get your license in the mail" he said without looking at me.
He was gone in an instant to help the next number. I still had my license! Hallelujah! I left feeling triumphant and grateful for this small favor.
My feelings would soon change.
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I found myself inside a very spacious but empty house. It was dark and quiet, eerie. I could see bare windows but could not see outside. Something did not feel quite right here. I sensed that something or someone was watching me. I walked from room to room moving slowly, nervously. The more I moved through the house, the more frightened I became. There was no one there, only empty rooms and closets. There was a second story. I climbed the stairs. Something was pulling me up the stairs. Suddenly my entire body was lifted up into the air and pulled forward. I no longer had control of herself. Some unseen power had engulfed me. I couldn’t lift my hand. I couldn’t utter a word. I wanted to scream;needed to scream. It was a lonely, terrifying, dark and empty place. I continued rising higher and higher until I was almost at the ceiling. I thought of Shane. Where was Shane? He would help me. How could I tell him I needed help? Then l was awake. Shane was beside me, starting to wake from his own slumber. It was 5:00 am, time for him to get up for work. I snuggled up to him and tried to push back the awful darkness that had just been in my dream. I was trembling. He held me close and I proceeded to tell him about the dream.
"It was just a dream." Shane soothed. "It was just a dream."
I would have this dream again. As Shane finally got up to shower, I lay in bed afraid to face another day.

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I was tired after a long drive and now found myself sitting in another waiting room. This one I liked even less than the last one with orange chairs and a computer generated voice echoing through my head. At least here there was no floating ‘voice’, just the receptionist behind the glass window calling my name. As I glanced up at the sound of my name, I noticed the other people in the waiting room. They were all quite a bit older than me. They all looked miserable. They were looking at me. One or two looked away as soon as I got up. Others unabashedly stared as I moved toward the window.
They were probably thinking, "She’s too young to be here".
"That’s right", I thought. "I am too young to be in a neurology clinic for Parkinson’s. Old people get this disease, not me."
I wanted to scream out to everyone in the building, "I am not old. I shouldn’t be here. Quit looking at me!"
Instead I turned to the woman seated inside the window. She wanted my card; that precious blue card that every doctor’s office receptionist needs in order to speak to you. Without the blue card you were a nobody. Not in the computer. Sorry. It irked me that I was only identified here by this card. Soon a nurse opened the door and I heard my name again. This nurse had to read my name from the chart as she called it out into the waiting room. Would they ever look at me and know who I am by my face, instead of my disease? It was as though these women were conditioned to act as if the people they served, patients, were not real people anymore since they now were abnormal. They had a disease; parkinson’s. They should be treated differently. The impulse to scream came into my throat again. I followed the nurse through the maze of small hallways back into the far recesses of the doctor’s cave. It felt like a cave. The hallways and rooms were small. There were no outside windows. The nurse left me alone in the small cubicle of a room, waiting. I read and reread the papers attached to the walls; reports, studies, newspaper articles, humorous stories, medical forms and brochures. I had read these before. There was nothing new. After a few eternity filled minutes the great ‘doctor’ arrived. In she came and said hello to me.
I tried very hard to like this doctor. She was the ‘head of neurology’ at this movement disorder clinic. She was important. She initially spent a long while with me explaining what was wrong with me and how I could deal with it. Now, however, I felt like this doctor, another woman, was my greatest stumbling block.
I was never one to accept at face value what any doctor told me. I wanted to know why and how. The many doctors I had seen in my adult years were often irritated because I asked so many questions. I studied things on my own and then I would ask them about it. They didn’t want to listen. They just wanted to be in charge and make me listen to them; the ‘doctor’. It was insane to me to accept that a forty two year-old mother of four would be stricken with a serious neurological disease. There was a reason and I wanted to find it. I hated that anyone accepted illness and made themselves as comfortable as possible but did nothing for the root problem.
I had been searching desperately for an answer to my recovery; an answer to this mystery, this hell that had seized me. It drove me to the point of inward hysterical anger that this doctor now sat before me calmly reading what she had written four months ago in my chart; her own important findings. Bla bla bla………. She then proceeded to do her tests on my muscle reflexes and ability to move in specific ways. She talked about my medication next. Then she got to the subject that I had been waiting for; the supplement I had been taking.
Even with the carefully prescribed medication, I was going downhill in respect to being able to move and function on my own. It had only been a year since I began the medication. Initially it had helped but now that help was fading fast. I would not accept this ‘disease’. I had a family who needed me; a four year old daughter, for crying out loud, who needed me. I had a husband who was not handling my illness well. I needed to find an answer now. And here sat this ‘specialist’ looking at me with condescension in her eyes; or so I thought.
Now the doctor droned on looking at my chart and drumming her fingers on the desk while she spoke her mind. The doctor proceeded to tell me that she felt I was being duped by people that wanted my money. The supplement would do nothing for parkinsons. In fact, I needed to accept the fact that there was nothing that would ever cure me, nothing……..
Fury filled my conscious being. I heard little else. I left as quickly as I could. I knew the doctor was wrong and I would prove it, somehow. Angry determination was now my encouraging friend. It would drive me to more answers, more healing. God had not taken me home yet. I must have more to do for him; more to learn. I was going to get well. But how? That was the question?


7 years later, I still have PD, still take medication, still have down and bad days. But...... I have many more good days and have progressed dramatically in my ability to move and function like anyone else. I have traveled- searching, studied, and worked hard at healing. It's happening a little at a time. My Dad told me this would happen. On most days I can play the piano, dance and move freely. I don't suffer from depression anymore. I have learned many valuable lessons that are deeply rooted in my heart. Call it the 'school of hard knocks'!





Priceless Soul
I began as everyone; a babe on planet earth.
Growing into childhood I felt no beauty or worth.
My soul tired, soon mournful and lost.
Where was love for me? To find it, what would be the cost?
The cost was great; many soul lessons learned.
Love found a way to me; a happy heart and peace were earned.
All God’s children are so precious and needed.
Understanding comes when love and forgiveness are heeded.
Joy is full as new souls begin here.
That precious person embraced in a loving sphere.
Mankind will endure amidst conflict and pain
Because pure love is light and our light is within.

by Tracy Anne Budge