What's the scariest thing of having Parkinson's Disease?

Are you familiar with the person in the above photo? He’s the guy in the Parkinson’s Disease hallucination commercial. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the gist of it: the dude is sitting in a chair painting a picture. He looks down and sees his dog at his feet. Suddenly there appears a second dog. It’s as if he’s on an acid trip from the 1960s.

I’ve been in the Parkinson’s world since my diagnosis ten years ago. Most of the things associated with the disease I’ve learned to handle. My tremors are minor. They pop up when I’m overly tired. The balance issues that led to my original diagnosis are still there, but I’ve learned to be careful while walking and climbing stairs. I’ve had problems with my hand freezing while trying to write, but now I occasionally use both hands on my pen to help get it started and guide it. One of my biggest issues was the stomach issues that led to diverticulitis. Surgery and medicine have that somewhat under control.

So far, so good, right? But, because Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease, you don’t know what will happen down the road. It could be a year….or maybe five or ten years. No one knows, not even your neurologist.

This is where the thoughts of hallucinations come in. In the last few weeks, I’ve been around some people who have been affected by the disease. There were two former classmates with P.D. The others were two friends whose father and husband had the disease. They all mentioned one thing they had in common: all had experienced hallucinations.

Hearing these stories scared me more than the commercials. One of the reasons I stopped attending Parkinson’s events was because I would hear similar stories like these. It made me think that what was happening to them would eventually happen to me. I would leave the event feeling depressed and occasionally in tears. I decided it was better not to go anymore.

So what’s the solution to this? I can’t do anything about running into people who have Parkinson’s. I just accept it and do the best I can. But, about that damn commercial….I can always change the channel…and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Whatever works! But man, I just can’t get that second dog out of my head. Scary….scary AF!!!