Emotional Flatlining

                                     May 27/2014

Today is just a dreadful, woe is me, kind of day.  For the last week I have been feeling quite well overall.  So much so, that I begin to live in a dream world where I think, dang, they must have given me the wrong diagnosis.  Then, before I can bury these thoughts as reality....shocker!!!....PD rears its ugly head.

More than the tremors, rigidity, and fatigue...apathy is one of the worst side effects of PD.  The indifference, that I can not fight.  It is not depression.  I have experienced that...no, this is quite simply its own category  and a well documented part of Parkinson's.

Today I don't write with any real purpose except for the fact that I just want to sit and cry.  Now..anyone who knows me, knows I am a crier.  I can cry better than the best, at a funeral, wedding, or sad movie.  I actually have to laugh.  Having attended a funeral of an acquaintance's relative, I was mistaken as a family member because of the wailing condition I was in.  Or, there was the time we were watching a hockey game.  The broadcaster mentioned that one of the players had lost their brother in a car accident, earlier in the week.  Later in the game, this player scored and raised his stick up to the sky.  Instantly I was so touched by this gesture, the tears ran like a river.  My sons looked at me, shook their heads and the one said, Really, mom?!?!?".

But Parkinson's has taken emotion away from me.  I can't really say that I don't feel it.  I think I do.  Rather, I just feel flat lined emotionally.  Today for example, I am feeling very low.  Sad.  But I  actually don't feel it in my soul, I feel it in my head.  It is so very hard to describe.

Likewise, I don't feel happiness any more.  I know when I am happy, but my soul, or the emotional part of my being is just the same.  No highs, no lows....just, flat lined.  I told my Movement Disorder Specialist that I just wanted to feel happy again.  And when I say feel....I guess I really mean, experience joy in my soul.

I am very happy right now as my oldest son has an upcoming wedding planned, and has purchased a house with his beautiful fiance.  My youngest son is completing his studies, and will now be a full fledged Firefighter and Paramedic.  A mother could not be prouder!  Or happier.  And I want so much to feel that natural emotion deep in my soul, like a normal person.  But although I am beyond happy, the actually physical overwhelming , exploding feeling of happy, just sits there.  On the surface.  It never moves to reach my soul.

And today I feel gloom.  Not sad.  Gloom seems to be a much better word as you can picture an enveloping fog throughout my soul.  But I can not reach down to the grips of sadness.  This is where I begin to wonder about the brain and body connection.  I know I am sad, sadder than yesterday, but my emotional feelings are just there.  My brain tells me I'm sad, my body just sits there, and does not respond one way or another.

There have been times, though few and far between, where the emotion can rise from a 0-10 in milliseconds.  It is very scary for me, as I have always been a patient, carefree type of person.  So when this volcano erupts in me....I really scare myself.  I don't know how, in that very moment, to contain it.  I will cry, scream, and say things that I honestly did not know existed within me.  It will take awhile to calm back down, but it ends, as quickly as it began.  The only thing is....people are left standing in the path of its fury. 

So ends the week of deception.  And today I am again reminded that Parkinson's has me it its grip.  Feeling the rigidity again, the pain in my hips and leg, the spastic movements every so often that bring me back to reality.  Good days and bad days.  The one good constant in my life, I guess, is that through all the highs and lows of my day, I stay levelled,  emotionally.  Physically my body is fighting back the forces of Parkinson's, but emotionally, he has given me the gift of just being able to tune him out.  A gift....possibly to strong a word.  More like an unexpected note....not signed and sealed, but definitely, delivered.