They Won’t Go!

Illustration of the Parkinson disease by Sir William Richard Gowers from A Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System in 1886 showing the characteristic posture of PD patients (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It scares me when I hear Al speak of the things he would like to do this summer, as it is hard for me to push his wheelchair to outings, that contain a lot of walking. Last night, after a very quiet day, he let me know of a few places he would like to go. I don’t know how to fix this yet. I am going to be calling the scooter store after I write this and see if they can help us in any way. Yesterday, Al was in a quiet mood. Depression was here for him after lunch. It was like shutting off an alarm clock. He was talking and smiley in the morning, and after lunch, he turned from that into depression, and sometime later in the evening he came back to me. When he does this, he lies on his bed, and sleeps off and on. He always wants to read the daily newspaper, but even that didn’t perk him up yesterday. I spent my day stripping off two coats of paint from my family’s child’s rocker. I hate it when a prior company or person paints on raw wood. It slows down the process of removing the paint and causes a lot of extra sanding. I got that finished and let the chair rest in the sun, trying to bleach the wood out a bit for a more even look. In the early evening I put a finish on it, but with so much raw wood, the finish looked good at first, but after soaking into the wood, it looked terrible, so today I am going to go buy a darker stain to put over it and even it all out. When you are working with wood that is not old, companies tend to use cheap woods that are not from the same tree. They realize that they are going to be covering it with a baked on finish that will hide  the cheap mixture of woods, so I have to put a little more creative touch to it to help it look it’s best. Last night, family and I built another fire, and sat around and roasted some marshmallows. I always enjoy looking into the fire’s eyes. Flames bouncing off the wood, providing a romantic, if I was in that position, and a calming effect. Hearing the crackles and pops of the wood is something I truly enjoy. When we were all finished we all got up to part ways for the evening. Al got up and  could not move. I thought it was from sitting on the swing too long, but he kept standing there not moving, even after having adequate time to adjust to the standing position. After many seconds, his feet began to move, but not good. He started to fall forward, and I raced over to him. His body began to have major tremors as his mind tried so hard to get his legs to move. He was having THE FREEZE from his Parkinson’s. His legs didn’t go anywhere again then, and he once again started to fall forward, as if he felt as if he himself moved forward, the legs would follow. I asked my son to come grab him from the other arm so we could keep him balanced until he could move again. It took several moments, but finally they moved. Thank you God! He finally made it and we got him inside. Al was very upset with himself, getting angry at his legs for not listening. He kept saying to his legs, MOVE, MOVE YOU DUMB LEGS! This kind of crap that is from Parkinson’s just makes my blood boil! I also, want to scream at it, but I am forced to plaster a smile on my face, and be encouraging to Al, letting him know it is alright, that we will just take our time, until the legs move. I knew it didn’t help him, as he is not stupid, he knew that his legs weren’t moving, so what was I talking about. So this was our day yesterday. Hoping for a better day today.