Identity and Diagnosis

Last Thursday I sat in the therapy chair as Mike, my therapist, and I discussed my life post starting a new job / new chapter of my life (full time with excellent benefits and an opportunity to make a difference for people). Essentially, many of the worries that were affecting my future were gone as I found my way to be the me I wanted to be (busier, more helpful, etc.). The session prior to that, the out of control Parkinson's life had caught up to me and body slammed me for the first time since its defined self came into my world, but good.

In hindsight, it was good to be able to have someone to talk to. Hug therapy and stoic philosophy only go so far. That said, a gift from the universe helps, too. Sometimes, we don't know how lost we are until we hit some ugly realization of the storm we're compensating for.

Anyway, at the early October session, we were talking about maintaining identity, which is something that every single person on this planet contemplates, whether actively or subconsciously. We want to know that we are something good and existing as us, not some bull in a china shop who is brushing up against things and knocking them all around.

As a Parkie, life is about balancing the new me with the old me. Like many of you, I had a life of who I was before Avalanche Day. Today, I am a part of that person. However, I also get to be parts of me that are Parkinson's.

From the minute Parkinson's symptoms came into play, minuscule fractions of that guy vanished as the bridges and highways of my brain were affected. The infrastructure of my brain slowed down, and I compensated in balance / posture / new ways of doing the same old things. Along the way, I adjusted my life accordingly.

Mike and I talked about one of those adjustments, which was giving up teaching. As a lover of knowledge (my geeky side) and a person who values education, I didn't want to lose that sense of who I was, after all I was fated to be a teacher all those years ago when I drove through Nevada for the first time.

At that point, we discussed how writing about Parkinson's is teaching, though it feels different. I see it as more sharing the experience so you can see the road you may find yourself on. I don't lecture a room, record attendance, grade papers, or demand cell phones are turned off when I'm writing! Then again, I'm not actively guiding people through feedback or directions of how to accomplish things when I'm writing either.

Mind you, I don't miss grading papers. I sometimes miss the lectures, but as a whole, other than the individualized guided help sessions and opportunities such as encouraging students to do things like go to academic conferences, I miss it a lot less than I thought I would.

Nevertheless, I still feel a teacher's voice inside of me, just in another way and for other things.

This leads me to where I am at this point in my life (as thinking like this does you in yours). Of the things that define you, how many of them are you doing?

I am a traveler, and while I'm still driving, I'm now the Jack Kerouac to my wife's Neal Cassidy (she drives while I'm riding shotgun, but we're still On the Road). Fortunately, I had my cross country jaunts, so I can always look back on those days as an "old man with his memories." I would encourage anyone to hit the open highway to see the world. Culture is best experienced in person with history and society flowing in our veins. You'll never regret anywhere you went (only places you should have gone).

I still go hiking, but the distances are far shorter, and there's a lot of time between the hikes. I definitely need to remedy this.

In our most recent trip, last weekend, my wife and I took in the Great Falls of the Potomac on the way home from Baltimore. We had been there before, but this time we saw it in autumn with rushing waters (instead of spring colors and low water). It's a short walk down the Potomac to do all the vistas (maybe a flat mile round trip). It's very accessible if you're tempted to go, should you be in the Baltimore / D.C. area.

By the way, people with permanent disabilities can get into national parks for free.

Yes, that is a rainbow on the waters!

I'm still a writer, though I haven't found the time to write fiction or non-fiction lately (until the snow day I was on earlier this week - work let out early, though it took 3 times as long to get home!).

I'm still able to love and appreciate the sci fi / archaeology / history / supernatural stuff, but that's not a defined version of me (just an interest umbrella).

I still follow baseball, though I'm not as devoted to it as I was when I was single.

I still find time to read, the news / non fiction / fiction. However, the anxiety I feel while reading them isn't proactive to making me happier. Then again, I don't think many people are content with right now.

I still love music, though I don't really find much connection to new releases or discovering them in the way that I used to. That said, it's not like I'm hurting for things to listen to (it's just I've heard many of them before).

I still eat too many cheese steaks for my own good.

I still enjoy the random sights and sites of American culture and all that it offers to do (music, theater, roadside attractions, historical places, unique fun experiences).

But what is this to my identity?

I can't say I'm identified by a sports team. Yes, I found myself rooting for Boston in the World Series, though I would have rooted for a good game if not for Manny Machado and his history with Boston and the rest of the league. Is it enough to just be a fan of 1 sport?

I have a sense of spirituality, but I'm not someone who recruits for my religion actively and openly, let alone wearing a badge to show my denomination. Nevertheless, I feel a definite need for God.

The same is true for my politics. Being in the middle, I find it hard to know where I am when neither side represents all that I am or am not. Nevertheless, I'm open to compromise and the best of both worlds.

It would be so much easier to be Mike Pence who is Christian / conservative / Republican (in that order). Instead, I often feel like Eugene O'Neill's hairy ape, struggling to fit in. Yeah, being a bull in a china shop is never easy, but it's the lot that Parkinson's leaves so many of us.

On much of that same note, I'm not self-identified by my colleges, nor do I feel an overwhelming connection to the military, though I am who I am, for better or worse because of my time spent in these institutions. I respect people who are. Maybe if I had been on a ship or in a combat unit, I would feel closer to that post discharge place, but that wasn't my military self. Likewise, if I had been into the tailgating / football Saturday world, I might feel differently about college as a name of where I went, but for me it was just an opportunity to learn. Nevertheless, I do feel a connection to professors who gave me that chance and their individual attention.

Obviously, like many of you, I have Parkinson's, but I'm not claiming that as my identity. Yes, there are the disclaimers and symptoms, but I don't want to be defined by this (as you don't either). I definitely don't like that it robs my old interests from me!

So what am I?

Sitting down with my Office of Vocational Rehab guy, Gary, who is also a good guy, we also looked at the results of my neurological baseline test.

On the positive side, I'm still thankful for the intelligence parts, but I think about the loss of speed in making decisions and the memory parts. I think about how Parkinson's has affected my personality, and how complicated it makes things sometimes.

Tom Friedman writes about the speed of Walmart's Internet site fighting to keep up with Amazon by accelerating search logarithms in fractions of a second to keep people hooked. While we can't see loss like that in our life (because we've compensated), it shows up like it does at the Daytona 500 when cars that are a mile or 2 slower an hour than the leader are lapped over and over. Here, it's all in comparison. My life didn't notice my inability to match symbols as quickly as I should until I was compared to other people. Then, I realized that I don't have the ability to save the world with instantaneous decision making anymore.

Besides, that's what we have Chuck Norris for.

So it goes.

Thinking back to the neurological baseline test I took 8 weeks ago and all that it was, a series of tests, some challenging / fun and some seemingly impossible / frustrating. I'm sure other experiences will vary on the Weschler Test, but I will say that my time with it left me feeling a few things.

Obviously, as an intelligent person with Parkinson's who is losing / will lose his mental functioning over time, it leaves me wanting to "leave less of a footprint" on the world around me. In life, I and many other people have opportunities to impact a lot of people who we know nothing about. The acronym below is a good model for me and others to fall back on. Even with Parkinson's face and voice mixed with being in a world that is pretty Dan-centric, that is a challenge since dopamine can leave my mood fluctuating. Whether it's not smiling enough or being "snappy" at people, it's not passing a Dale Carnegie class.

Hence, I'm working on it.

As teachers / professionals / leaders / the adults in the room, people have to do a lot more to tell other people why they need to do specific things. Because the syllabus / boss / doctor / parent said so isn't good enough. If I'm doing something that challenges me in a way that is beyond my abilities, I need to know why. Even the concept of folding t-shirts into 6-inch squares and tweezing the ends to get them even (spraying them with starch to stay there) had a purpose (attention to detail is everything with lives on the line - though my ability to fold said shirts wasn't something I could use to stop terrorists). I'd like to hope I've always done this as something more than "because I said so" (for instance,  we need to learn Civil War history in English 11th grade to understand the story Gods and Generals; some people don't even know the Abraham Lincoln part of that). 

As an educational professional, I can tell you that many college majors are losing math requirements that don't matter anymore for them. Algebra doesn't need to hold people back from a job unless the job requires algebra, trigonometry, or calculus. I used to believe this was watering things down. Now I see it as creating people who can get paid to make a difference for others while financially supporting their family units (self / others). 

Here, I also feel we should be more open to questions and issues that people might have while going through the process. Not everyone is attacking our credentials. And yes, I know I have to work on this.

As for my personal areas of frustration:

On said psych test, listening to Casio beeps from the 1970s might tell if I have hearing issues, but on an ancient audio cassette, they all sound pretty similar. That said, I know I have hearing issues. I just would have liked a clearer range of sounds as being different or the same to feel like I had a fighting chance at the questions.

Listening to 15 or so pairs of unconnected words read off like an auctioneer and being asked for B when the tester says A feels like something designed to trip people up. Doing something and coming off terribly in the response doesn't feel good, even if we end up in an average or above average percentile when compared against other testers.

Hearing 10 "incorrect" responses in a row on a series of pattern questions when we can't figure out the pattern is very demoralizing. Additionally, when we're told to guess anyway, having no idea what's correct, feels like setting us up to keep hearing the response of "incorrect." Had I guessed correctly, the answers would have been worthless. That's not fun when I already feel like I have a condition that's literally causing me to "lose my mind."

A test like the blindfolded project to put shapes into a standing board with 1 hand makes a lot more sense when the OVR guy says that this is the skill that electricians and HVAC people use when they're working in hidden, enclosed spaces as compared to just the feeling that I need to do something or I'm uncooperative and venting, or prone to my own way (though in actuality, I can be all 3 things for plenty of other reasons, too).

In the end, there are times when we need to suck it up and do. Going into something that is that kind of a necessity goes a lot better with an explanation / disclaimer in the beginning than a feeling of "you're here; now perform."

My time with the test was rough, but I finished. I didn't not want to finish. Some people get frustrated and walk away. The doctor even stated this when I asked him how do other people do.

That said, a test that is for our own good shouldn't make us feel that way.

Should you take the test, I can only say this is a test of you. However, you can't study for it. Nevertheless, you can know what it's trying to get out of you. You should ask questions. You shouldn't be left to feel inferior or a fraction of yourself (like I did) after taking the test.

Take this not as a validity of the test, but rather as words of advice to the next tester, should you need to get one to show disability.

And please remember, your test scores are not your identity unless you let them be your identity.

And this brings me back to my identity now.

I'm still almost all the things I was back in the beginning of this blog...

I am a husband to Heather

I am a son to John and Essie

I am a brother to Beth

I am a nephew to Toot, Dave, Pat, Steve, and Deb

I am Big D’s godfather

I am Uncle Dan to over 20 different kids and adults in Pennsylvania and Ohio

I am a cousin and all other kinds of family related tags

I am a friend to some really great people who have listened to my story about this and been there in good times and rough days

I’m a Berks County Boy living in Ephrata, smack dab in the middle of Amish Paradise

I am an educational adviser who works hard to push people to be great while teaching them how to write well, and for this, I’ve seen some really great people I feel awesome about working with
I am the proud product of a community college, which transformed my life
I am a writer of ghost stories, Parkinson's blogs, and outdoor tales
I may write ghost stories, but I believe in God and the power of true love
I went to a Catholic college whose teachers also influenced me

I am a hiker who is active in hiking groups to include the Standing Stone Trail, which in my humble opinion is the best trail in Pennsylvania

I am a photographer

I love music from all genres, especially Polyphonic Spree and Neutral Milk Hotel

I’m a baseball fan

I served in the Air Force

I like chocolate iced donuts, cheese steaks, and pizza more than I should

I’m heavily influenced by stories of people overcoming hardship.

I have a weird sense of humor

I’d like to think I’m a good person, but I’ve done some knuckleheaded things that I wish I could undo, too
The Stockdale Paradox is my defining code.

In the end, I am me. I am working to better myself and to enjoy life without getting so hung up on the feelings of futility and sadness. Whatever that may be, so be it. That's me!

Sometimes, all I need is a little push of inspiration from a great therapist. Yeah, that session was my last one until I feel I need him again. The same is true for my Office of Vocational Rehab case, though we are going to meet up again, eventually, to discuss potential work needs or progress.

It felt good to graduate, even if it's only a chapter of my life.

Additionally, sometimes all we need is a voice for the cause... but that's the next post to come (with American Ninja Warrior Jimmy Choi and my wife Heather; yes, he really is that awesome in person).

30 Parkinson's Mental Health Concerns / Developed Conditions

            Recently a friend of mine who works with a mental health group encouraged me to speak for said group’s clients and the community about their mission. I thought about this for about 2 seconds, and then I agreed. In the future, I will be doing this in order to get people to think about how Parkinson’s affects people with Parkinson's mental health (I can't speak for other conditions since I don't have them).

            Now that I’m sitting with my thoughts, I’m trying to think about how I want to express things. Normally, when we think of mental health, I immediately come to the word depression, so obviously, there are concerns many Parkies feel with issues of serotonin and dopamine levels.

            And while the biological reasoning for our problem is expressed in many places, there are other things that Mr. PD creates:

1.      Stress – I’ll let Holmes and Rahe handle this one for you, but I will say stress can do a number on anything and everything. Thus, the key is to find your happy place quickly. Accept loss forever. Create opportunity in tragedy. Easy enough, right? OK, yeah right, but really, that is the end goal we should be looking for. The question is how to get there. Interestingly enough with Holmes and Rahe, a jail term comes in fourth (in terms of severity) behind divorce and separation. Obviously, people must have access to Kevin Hart telling them how to “get hard.” Number one is death of a loved one. Contracting an illness is #6, which is just ahead of marriage. Personally, I would think that most men could lower the stress of marriage for themselves and their future wives if they deferred decision making unless it really needs their approval (in my case, I pushed for a botanical garden over a stately mansion, but that was more in how I knew my wife loved flowers and how a foot or so of snow when we were previewing it wasn’t a fair judge of an August wedding / my wife deferred to me on the music choices, and I was OK with all other choices).

2.      Fear vs. Paranoia – we can have healthy fears of things, but they can also develop into full-blown phobias. Keep in mind, the more it’s mixed with anxiety, the more it becomes “irrational,” even when we know we’re being “suckered” by it. And trust me; it takes a person who has been suckered and still knows he’s being suckered to say this.

3.      Anxiety – fear, panic, worry, and unease. It’s a well-known fact Parkinson’s causes none of these things (sorry, Opposites Day).

4.      Neurotic state – long term condition of feeling down, guilty, anxious, shy, self-conscious, or envious.

5.      Trauma – a serious disturbance that we feel after something happened. For instance, a little girl is bit by a dog, so she might relive it or feel paranoid around dogs. What things might cause us to relive bad feelings and create disturbances to our sense of being after PD does its number on us?

6.      Hallucinations – wide awake visions that aren’t there. These fall under psychotic disorders since they are a break from reality. Dopamine fluctuations and medicines may cause these.

7.      Surreal dreams / Nightmares / REM sleep disorder – what’s a good night of sleep to a Parkie? Either our meds keep us awake until the wee hours, we don’t wake up refreshed, or we have weird dreams that we may act out. While the dreams would be something to TIVO, the issue here is that we have them constantly, and they create separate beds because we don’t have off switches; thus, we can be “physical.”

8.      Co-morbid diagnoses – there’s a whole lot of these “free toasters” that we get for playing. Every time we add one, we get a new opportunity to feel “blah.” Mine include dystonia, sleep apnea, and hyperhidrosis. I also had dyskinesia on one med, and the doctors also found a nice case of Lyme disease, which won be a spinal tap.

9.      Hopelessness – There’s no cure so people collapse into sadness. This can become “absurdity” when we wonder, “Why push the boulder up the hill if it’s only going to roll back down each and every time?” Here, we might find ourselves blaming ourselves / others / God instead of coming to grips with how things are what they are. There’s nobody to blame, and besides, there’s no check we’ll get to compensate for our pain. At its worst, this leads to suicidal ideations. There is no best except getting past it.

10.  While we are coming to grips with loss, we go through the obvious sadness. We also go through denial, anger, and guilt. How do we ever make peace with this and accept our place in life? This is individual to everyone.

11.  Lack of independence – Everything from becoming the passenger to having a designated butt wiper falls in this category. Sounds like fun, hmm?

12.  Losing people / driving people away before they leave – On one hand, we have those people that can’t handle the burdens of our condition, so they leave. On the other hand, other Parkies will go out of the way to get rid of people so that they can be in control of burning the whole house to the ground. It’s not easy to watch Parkinson’s, and it’s not easy to watch loved ones watch Parkinson’s. Here, I like to say that nobody has a monopoly on who has it the worst. Stick together. Love is a good thing.

13.  Parkinson’s Emotional overload – In my case, computer voices on telephones / self-checkout lines / intense traffic with volume, lights, and sounds / screeching noises / intense agitations of others. This generally comes with a disclaimer, though it also proceeds through discussions / needs / quiet places. Recently, I added people swirling ice around in glass cups and any noise directly in my right ear. Some sounds are just too much. When they hit, it makes me want to explode (in screams and vomiting), so it’s easier to close myself off when I know that I can control myself.

14.  Perceived mood or tone – I’m smiling, but since I’m not smiling, you probably don’t think I’m happy. Cue Louis Armstrong so that I can smile as big as possible so you don’t think my voice and facial expressions dislike you. Oh, and let’s not forget how bradykinesia, which causes this, also keeps us from blinking.

15.  How the heck do I explain all of this to young family members?

16.  The Be All, End All med didn’t work. Now, we need to get off the medication AND get readjusted to the new one. There goes a month or so, while symptoms exacerbate. In the meantime, we get to think about things like I did when I confronted past / future traumas of cognitive issues / dementia / passing out in the middle of a conversation

17.  False diagnoses – PD can’t be confirmed until death. Sometimes, like with Robin Williams, it’s Lewy Body Dementia (same ballpark, different team). Sometimes, we were diagnosed as X, when it’s really PD. Since we need our brains, we’ll just have to hope our diagnosis is enough and the meds work.

18.  Avalanche Day – the day we find out what we have in the form of “we just need to confirm this, but we’re about 100% sure.”

19.  The day of confirmation – this could be another avalanche day, but the reality is that we’ve crossed this bridge with the MRI, bloodwork, and physical testing.

20.  Randall “Tex” Cobb Blues – We’re revved up to fight the champ, and we come in tough, but instead of winning, we take 15 rounds of a beating to lose the fight. This is how it feels when we lose the fight and take the step back.

21.  Apollo 13 Blues – Every time we lose the moon, we have to get ourselves set to get back to solid ground. Along the way, we get PO-ed at the world, and we find venting our maladies is the only option. I like to say how all those things that once seemed so important are things we learn to lose and trade for other good things / life. Yeah, what’s really important and how do we adjust when the time comes to confront what we can’t do?

22.  The JK Rowling Blues – When we write / express our thoughts, but nobody is out there listening to us, so it feels like we’re just waiting for that big opportunity where someone else says that, “X is worth reading / listening to.” When that happens, we get to share our story. Until then, we’re just hoping to make contact. In the meantime, it just feels like a lot of rejection letters.

23.  The Jenny McCarthy Blues – we have bad luck with traditional meds, so we blame some BIG entity and assert conspiracy while backing hucksters with “natural” remedies. There’s lots of people out there selling non-scientific stuff. This is not to say that all natural remedies are bad, but if it sounds too good to be true, and it’s not being backed by doctors and researchers… yeah. You can learn more about vitamin standards through the discussions at the FDA. Here is another good link on that.

24.  Frankl / Stockdale Reality Therapy - In many ways, you can put anyone talking about a cure being out by Christmas as people promoting false hope. This is named for two writers who didn’t give in to that magical thinking, so they focused instead on being grounded for the long haul.

25.  The High Times Blues – when people with no understanding of CBD recommend medical marijuana to someone who has Parkinson’s. Mind you, this has nothing to do with medicinal properties, but instead is a backdoor opportunity to legalize marijuana so that they can get stoned in a room with a big hemp leaf poster in it. This comes with a standardized argument sheet from ProCon.org. THAT SAID, in my time with Parkinson’s, I would be more apt to try this than before (as based on problems my body has with other meds).

26.  The X-Files Blues – we come to see some great truth of Parkinson’s / its treatment, and we can’t seem to shake what it means to the world. This isn’t all good or bad, but it does create an extreme sense of focus on what staying the same path will do to us and them in a negative kind of way. For me, this happened most recently when I encountered issues with dopamine agonists, and I found a lot of professional information about the horrific symptoms they MIGHT cause. This is big and scary, and people do need to know. That said, how do we say it when A) it isn’t written in stone and B) it can appear completely out of left field, but C) it may not happen?

27.  The Internet Research in Parkinson’s Quasi Doctorate – when our life becomes so well-versed from reading way too much Parkinson’s information despite never having successfully completed an Anatomy and Physiology Class. Symptoms include the ability to use phrases like “Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale” and “MAO-B inhibitors” in conversation so many times that our knowledge becomes contagious to others who talk with us. I'm about ready to finish my sophomore year.

28.  Medshelf expansion plans – The longer we go with our condition, the more medications that we end up needing / switching out.

29.  The doctor becomes my doctor the longer we go in our condition.

30.  Watching loved ones suffer.

Add your thought here.

More Chichen Itza (Mexico) pictures here.

Sleep Anxiety: Yet Another Hidden Symptom

My wife and I are driving down a winding road in my new to me used car. It has replaced my beloved older car, which “died” saving me from an accident. Normally, the ride is a pretty smooth one, but for some reason, I am not able to hug the curves carefully enough, and my car goes careening off the road into a lake.

As it begins to sink, we hurry to keep it afloat. There is no way that I can lose 2 cars in about 4 months, so I must do everything in my power to keep it from sinking to the bottom of the lake. As I do this, I keep pinching myself to see if this situation is real or a dream. I’m pretty sure it isn’t actually happening, but it feels real. Nevertheless, for what I can’t feel in the lack of sensation my pinch creates, the dream is not ending. The car continues to sink, and I can feel the weight of this moment coming after me as it goes on and on.

As time goes on, there is a palpable feeling that my car is definitely sinking, and I'm truly in a world of not-so-good-ed-ness. This is getting scarier and scarier as I try to save my car and pinch myself to see if the madness is real.

Eventually, the dream does end, and I am safe in my bed, but all too completely aware that this is another one of my Parkinson’s dreams playing tricks with me.

If the commercial placement of hallucinations in the life of a Parkinson’s patient is any indication, then people are becoming aware of this side effect in the lives of people with said neurological condition. While it’s not a stretch to think of people with neurological conditions experiencing these issues of things happening that aren’t happening (for instance, ghostlike movement off to a person with PD's sides in an otherwise empty house OR paranoia regarding what family members are “doing” to them), society often blanks out on the way dreams affect Parkinson’s since they tend to be isolated from the slumbering Parkinsonian.

All things considered, why would they know?

If I were to go back to college now, I would love to work on a huge project with Parkinson’s and REM Sleep Behavior Disorder. It would be great to do an independent study where I could look into issues of hallucinations, anxiety, dreams, and visions regarding neurological conditions.

I know what you’re thinking: This dude needs serious help.

But it’s true. I love trying to sift through the dream symbolism and surreal nature of my dreams to decipher what they mean. These include winning big at a casino (compulsive gambling is a rare symptom of Ropinerole and other meds like it), being afraid of my friend driving wildly, ending up at Sandals for a romantic tryst as part of a comedy movie, going to a concert with Pete Yorn rolling around on the ground singing songs that sound more like Sun Kil Moon than him (after seeing Blink 182 and the Offspring collaborate as skateboarders go wild on a halfpipe), waking up and feeling an earthquake shake through my room, flying above a slot canyon on my command, searching for a lighthouse in Britain (which I never get to), and fighting people to the death with makeshift spears, which culminates with me actually punching at my antagonists.

What does all of this mean?

Well, for one, if it involves out of the dream punching, kicking, and scratching, then it means REM Sleep Behavior Disorder is present. This is one of the first signs of having Parkinson’s. One longitudinal study with 29 patients found that almost 40% of those surveyed (a very small amount, mind you) had Parkinson’s diagnoses in a little over a decade. That’s definitely cause for more research.

For two, it means that when we dream, we can feel the anxiety of our lives pushed into dreams, though this isn’t always true. Sometimes, it’s just smoking cessation meds, blood pressure meds, or Parkinson’s meds creating a weird situation in the brain. Insomnia or sleep deprivation can also cause nightmares, but in other cases, anxiety can manifest itself into our unconscious world of sleep problems.

For three, it means that demons are trying to possess said person. In this case, get the patient to a nunnery or monastery, as appropriate! Actually, you’d do better to call Father Karras. He or the Warrens are your only hope.

But since this is reality for a Parkinson’s patient (gotta love our dopamine level fluctuations), it could be a little bit of 1+2. Many of us tend to deal with depression, angst, feelings of meaninglessness, loneliness, loss of independence, communication problems, suicidal ideations, worry, aggression, nihilism, absurdity, crisis of faith, and rejection. Isn’t it obvious that we would feel anxious in both sleep and real life?

Add to this a bizarre cocktail of medicines that could make Timothy Leary stare wide-eyed, and you have a recipe for problems.

This is not always true, but the Mayo Clinic feels that when nightmares keep people from sleeping or wanting to go to sleep because of their intensity and frequency, then they should see a doctor, especially if this intrudes on their daily life. This article at Psychology Today lists a lot of helpful hints on controlling dream problems. These include staying on a schedule, relaxing, and things to avoid (video games and caffeine, for two).

For me, I’m not scared to dream - even when they get surreal or wild. I don’t hurt myself, and my wife is now a bedroom away, so I can’t hurt her anymore. Here, I should clearly note that I would never knowingly hurt my wife, but because of pillow stripping / throwing and scratches in the past, I had to accept this situation. I always say that it’s amazing what we can accept to stay alive, but this punishment was a bummer. Sometimes, a sleeping buddy just wants to touch toes to toes out of a feeling of, “Yeah, I love this person next to me.” It’s not meant to be some bizarre fetish either. It’s just, “I’m connected to you.” Things like that and holding hands, being in the same room, casual “I love you’s,” and hugs / kisses when leaving and coming home are the true intimacies.

 Nevertheless, those dreams… what they can’t take from us or prevent us from doing.

As I’ve written about, recently, I had a CPAP machine prescribed to me for treating sleep apnea. Nevertheless, I would tear it off in a half hour to three hours each night I wore it. I only remember one night that I took it off. Everything else… a mystery.

So far, in my Parkinson’s journey, this is my only treatment refused. There’s no point taking more anxiety / Parkinson’s meds when I’m taking 3 already. I know I’m a health helper person, but sometimes, we have to make a value choice. Do I want another med and its potential side effects so I can try to use the CPAP machine? Will I be OK without the CPAP machine if I choose not to use it?

I guess I'll find out soon.

In the meantime, bring on those dreams.