Parkinson's Disease Part 6

 

Well here we are at another Friday and so I will share a little more about Parkinson's Disease, the dreaded condition I have, today I will share a little about slowness of movement.

The name for this is “hypokinesia” if you can pronounce that you are better then me, anyway it affects everyday movements such as walking, getting out of a chair and in and our of bed, turning over in bed. It can also affect speech, swallowing and facial expressions. If the slowness affects one's arms then it will affect one's writing as well as other hand movements.

This slowness of movement is the most important feature in the diagnosis of Parkinson's and nearly always the most disabling. It is what causes the expressionless face (which I hate) which can lead some to think the suffer is stupid or angry which we are not.

It leads to the lack of natural movements such as blinking or swinging the arms when walking and even if the suffer is nervous they may sit still without turning their head or moving their hands. I wish I could stop moving my hands at times, it always looks like I am waving at people.

They disability from this arises from the fact that our voluntary movements become slow, reduced in range and require more effort and concentration to achieve. This is why our steps become shorter and we may start to drag our feet in a shuffle instead of lifting them off the ground, when we shuffle we can do so pretty fast being unable to stop causing us to run into things, yes this has happened to me.

Repetitive movements need to do things like brush one's teeth or stirring saucepan can become difficult and frustrating. This also goes to handwriting it can become not just slow but messy and smaller the longer one attempts to write. This books says it can also come to an involuntary halt which will require some effort to resume, damn didn't know that.

Then there the issues with using our fingers such as trying to turn a page in a book, doing up buttons and and bra hooks which is why I don't wear bras with hooks anymore. If one hand is more affected then the other it can make two handed tasks even harder like peeling food or doing up shoelaces.

That will do for this post, more to come next week.