I’ve always been partial to button-fly jeans. That’s what I wore until some time in 2021, when the fingers of my right hand decided to go on strike. This was pre-diagnosis and pre-medication — all I knew was that a trip to the rest room had become a three-act play. So I bought a bunch of new jeans with zippers.
This was my first, exceedingly mild, experience with the hassles disabled people deal with every day.
I’m pretty new to this Parkinson’s thing, and my symptoms are currently in the “inconvenience” category. But even for those of us in the early stages, Señor Parky creates challenges as we go about our lives.
Here are some tools I use* to work around my limitations:
Tying my shoes is an adventure these days. Sometimes my right hand works perfectly (thanks, Levodopa!) and sometimes the fingers get slow and clumsy. So I often wear slip-on shoes from Kizik. Kizik has a patented heel gizmo that turns their shoes into hands-free slip-ons. I own two pairs of Irvines, which look decent as business casual shoes, and a pair of Wasatchs. They are comfortable and easy to put on.
Alternatives: Zeba, OrthoFeet and Skechers also market “hands-free” shoes. I haven’t tried them.
I recently bought a pair of Bread Elastic Shoelaces to use on an old pair of Converse All-Stars. They look like regular shoelaces, but the elastic means you can lace them up once at the desired tightness, leave them tied, and then pull them on and off. They are less convenient than Kiziks — you have to pull the shoes on by hand — but if you have some shoes you like, using Breads means you don’t have to tie them all the time.
Typing is also a pain with a “Parkinson’s hand.” I have used Nuance’s Dragon software to dictate part of the time — I’ve never been a great typist — for more than a decade, and now I use it all the time. There are less expensive versions of Dragon, but I bit the bullet several years ago and purchased Dragon Professional, which has some extra bells and whistles for business writing. I write faster with it, and my spelling is better. On the other hand, Dragon and I sometimes disagree on what I actually said, so proofing is crucial. And if you have multiple customers with similar names spelled differently (in 2023, I had a Michaela, a Mikayla and a MaKayla), you will beat your head on your desk.
Alternatives: Microsoft now includes speech recognition software in Windows 11. Since I already paid for Dragon years ago, I’ve never tried Microsoft’s version. If you are considering dictation software and already have Windows 11, free is a very good price. iPhones and iPads also have a decent built-in text to speech feature.
I also use a “text expansion” product called PhraseExpander. This allows me to type a small snippet which will expand automatically into something larger. For example, typing “pml” causes my laptop to fill in my email address. There are less expensive text expansion products out there, but during my sales days I liked PhraseExpander’s ability to build multi-paragraph templates for prospecting emails.
Using a mouse. As a bonus that came with my tremor, the middle finger of my right hand developed a propensity to click the mouse at random times with no warning or motivation. Depending on what laptop software I was using at the time, this generated an amusing variety of drop-down menus, and often brought my productivity to a halt. The lovely PDXKnitterati showed me how to convert my computer to a “left-mouse” orientation. Here’s how to do it. It took me about a week to teach myself how to use a mouse with my left hand, but this has made a huge difference.
Miracle Cure of the Week
A Small Request for Email Subscribers
If you subscribe to this blog by email, you will notice a “Comment/Like” link at the bottom of the message. Last week, one of my subscribers attempted to comment using that link, and told me it did not work for her. I tried it on a test email and could not duplicate the problem.
If you have a moment, please click on the “Comment/Like” link and try to leave a comment. If it does not work for you, I would be grateful if you hit Reply on this email and let me know.
Thanks for reading!
*Please note: while I’d be delighted to be considered an “influencer,” and receive free stuff and sponsorships (call me, Kizik!), I paid retail for everything described above. If you click on a link and buy something, I will not be compensated in any way. So go ahead…or don’t.
Shakin' Street -- A Parkinson's Blog 
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