Since we are a population of mortals, sooner or later we come to terms with the fact that we are going to age and die. Accepting that reality is definitely a challenge, and sometimes when my peers and I chat, we commiserate how the unthinkable has happened. We’re certifiably old compared to a majority of fellow human beings and we can’t believe it.

Do I mind getting older? Of course I do, but what really gets me is Parkinson’s has greased the slide. Today I was at physical therapy for a bad back, and as the therapist worked on me, I remarked how I was not the person I was twelve years ago. He didn’t answer, and I guess he was thinking to himself, “No duh! Who is?” I realized the futility of telling a temporarily healthy therapist what I really meant. I was not just losing my youth; I had become an entirely different person. This wasn’t just an older me. This was an older other.

We all have to deal with aging, but sometimes I don’t recognize the person I live within. My face still looks like me, but I stand crooked, my shoulders do not line up, and where once I had exercised daily, I can barely move when I am trying to and can’t stop moving when I least want it. I had been a top student as a young person. Now I panic about my ability to think, taking IQ tests off the Internet to reassure myself. I once had a great interest in my family, but now I am often inattentive to their conversations. Job or task completion once drove me to accomplishments. Now I feel as if I am drifting through life without a sail or rudder or navigation tool. I did not worry about the future back then, but now I try not to even think of it. Although I have a patient and helpful husband, I know that only I get to live every moment for the rest of my life with this stranger I have become.

How am I coping? Well, somewhere I read that Ritalin can wake us out of the apathy that is part and parcel of our disease, but I rely on sheer determination to stay focused on tasks, talking to myself sternly as I do housework or school work or bills or projects, all of which seem to never get completed to the satisfaction of the former me. I try to lighten up when I am with others, because I don’t want to become the dullard I fear I might become. I work hard at it, trying to keep intact not only my body but my personality. I am trying to find the person I once was. I am really trying.

To paraphrase Emily Dickensen, uninvited Parkinson’s stopped for me even though I never considered such a circumstances as even a remote possibility. Time for the uninvited guest to leave. Time for a cure.

Ann