Swimming

A girl friend thoughtfully took me to our local pool one morning. It was a fantastic  feeling being in the water and I felt almost “normal” in the pool (whatever “normal” is!). I hadn’t been swimming for over 3 years and I had wondered if I’d sink to the bottom like a weighted corpse. But I needn’t have worried, for the repetitive natural action of swimming felt so good, it was as if I’d been to the pool just last week. I was able to swim much more than I had envisaged, but what amazed me more than anything, was whilst buoyant in the water, I could barely feel the Parkinson’s at all. Of course I paid for my enthusiasm dearly later on in the day, and had the most dreadful night.

The longer I live with Parkinson’s, the more I suspect how little we all understand about this unpredictable disease. If anyone had seen me in the water that day, they would never have thought I suffered from Parkinson’s. However, the moment I stepped out of the pool, I was reduced  back to shuffling and Parkinson’s was once again in full swing. How can I expect other people to understand what I go through, when I hardly understand it myself?

Perhaps there is a solution: find an activity of a repetitive nature that allows you to participate and joyously push Parkinson’s out of the way. I would stay in the pool all day and night if this kept Parkinson’s out of my life. Maybe a job at the dolphinarium would be the answer, where I could be waterlogged to my heart’s content. I fear I may end up looking like a wrinkled prune and smelling of fish, but this would be a small price to pay!

Depressed or frustrated? - it's a fine line and a topic for my article this week in The Huffington Post.