Shakin' Street — A Parkinson's Blog

In Which Phil Freaks Out Over A Minor Brain Cramp, Tests Himself, And Concludes He’s Still Okay. Probably.

The scene: a Saturday morning ping pong match at my Parkinson’s gym. The score of the game was 5-3, my favor. Another game was happening at a table a few feet away.

We were in the middle of a point when a player at the other table asked me a question about what happens when the ball clips the net.

While keeping the ball in play, I answered the question. My opponent also participated in the conversation, and eventually the point ended.

The good news is that we were both able to continue the rally as we talked. The bad news is that when the conversation concluded about 20 seconds later, neither of us could remember who won the point.

Was the score now 6-3 or 5-4? We’ll never know. We had to play it over.

This tracks with my neurology appointment a week earlier. The doc tested the mobility of my right arm (the “Parkinson’s arm”) by moving side to side and up and down. Then she did it again as I recited the alphabet backwards.

Those who knew me in high school or college might be surprised to learn I could, and still can, recite the alphabet. In both directions. But as I ran through the letters, my arm got stiffer and its range of motion decreased.

It’s one of the joys of Parkinson’s — the brain sometimes doesn’t want to accomplish two things at once.

I initially chalked up the ping pong confusion up to a mildly amusing example of multitasking gone wrong.

But on the half-hour drive home, I had time to ruminate about it. My mind went to a place familiar to anyone who has a family history of dementia.

What if this wasn’t just old guy/Parkinson’s absent-mindedness? What if it was The First Sign I’m Heading Down the Path To Memory Care?

Whenever I see such a sign – no matter how flimsy – my default response is to take some sort of action…as soon as I finish mentally blowing the whole thing out of proportion.

I couldn’t just allow Parkinson’s to eat me alive — it was time to take a tangible step to regain the advantage.

It was time to Do Something.

I went to YouTube, searched for “Multitasking Exercises for Parkinson’s” and chose this video:

To oversimplify, these are calisthenics in which the hands are doing one thing while the feet are doing something different.

I was able to do most of the exercises, mostly. A couple of times I ran the video back to re-watch an exercise. Twice I stopped it entirely, slowly practiced a particular move, and started the video again.

By the end, I decided my brain still works (mostly), and felt pretty good about my performance in the living room. I hope my neighbors enjoyed it as much as I did.

Bonus for Those Who Read to the Bottom

If you are a Hall & Oates fan, you’l be interested in a free phone service called Callin’ Oates. Call any time day or night, and you can hear a hit song of your choice from your buddies Daryl & John. “For ‘One on One,’ press 1. For ‘Rich Girl,’ press 2…. etc.” No video, just a phone number. 719-266-2837.

What it says — a very small rodent eating even smaller stuffed tortillas.

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If the Eagles had hired Mark Knopfler…

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I have no context to offer — the guy who posted this on YouTube says, “I don’t know any more about this video. I stole it from Twitter.” But this appears to be a Czechoslovakian jazz band playing Ike & Tina Turner’s “Nutbush City Limits,” with the lyrics sung in… whatever they speak over there.

Ike & Tina sang it better, as did Bob Seger. But this is a noble effort.