Thursday, February 24, 2011

A new site to track symptoms and response to medications

Meg Duggan and her sister (who has Parkinson's) have created a website where you can track your on/off times, dyskinesias, and response to medication.  It automatically creates graphs from the data you enter, and it's very easy to use.  Here's what Meg wrote:
"I am the sister of a young onset PwP and have spent 14 years in PD advocacy, programming and fundraising. This fall my sister started having terrible problems with on/of cycling. We sat down and developed an on-line charting procedure for her. We've decided to share it with the PD community. Its FREE and ANONYMOUS."
Here's a link, and I'll also put a link on the right hand side of this page under "Parkinson's Links":

http://www.datadrivenhealth.org/

Much thanks to Meg and her sister!

Friday, February 18, 2011

Unexpected challenges

It's funny how sometimes when I think something will be hard to do, it turns out to be easy, and sometimes when I think it will be a breeze... it isn't.

I spent the whole week (including my Friday off) in a series of technical training courses for my work; useful stuff that I can apply directly to my projects.  I was looking forward to it, actually.  However, it was much harder for me than I had imagined.

First, I had to drive for an hour to an hour and a half (depending on traffic) to get there, and I'm not used to commute driving, so my knuckles were a little white by the time I got there.  Then, from 9:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night, I was sitting in a chair.  We had a couple of 10 min. breaks and about a half an hour of lunch time, but other than that, I was sitting.  It was hard.  I tried to keep still; I couldn't.  I was locked in unseen and silent combat with my body.  It was very distracting, making it difficult for me to absorb the information being presented.  In fact, it was so distracting that I was almost in tears a couple of times.  We had labs to do which required looking in the workbook, then at the screen to enter something, then back at the workbook, over and over and over.  I kept losing my place, so it took me about twice as long as it should have.  Then, when we finally finished for the day, there was that wonderful drive home; in the dark, in the rain, in the traffic.   Every evening I felt like I had spent the day digging ditches.

This kind of thing used to be so easy!  Next time, I guess I'll see if I can arrange to have a nice, relaxing normal work day in between classes...

About Me

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I'm a lucky lady. I have a wonderful husband of 27 years, a fantastic 25 year old son (I'm so proud of him!) a loving and supportive family, the best friends in the world, a job that I love, and... Parkinson's Disease. I was diagnosed in September 2006. That was a jolt, but I'm learning to deal with it.