Today began with much dizziness. Then, as I tried to prep the backyard deck for the coming winter, fatigue. So much fatigue I thought I was going to collapse on the deck, and was grateful my neighbor across the alley was also working in his backyard and could see if I wasn’t moving.

Something else I noticed is the tremors in my left hand are worse today, and I’m starting to see a small beginnings of it in the right hand. That’s my drawing hand. I know I have to expect that to get worse, but if the day comes that I can’t draw anymore I don’t know how much longer I’m going to want to keep living.

So it goes…as the Tralfamadorians say…

Of all the symptoms of Parkinson’s, the one I dislike the very most is fatigue. Tremors at this stage I’m in are trivial. I get the occasional stiffness, mostly in my thighs, but it’s not bad. I get the dizzy spells randomly. The brain fog comes and goes. But fatigue, when it hits, slams me down. It sucks the minutes of my life I still have left away and I just want to stay in bed and I get nothing done.

I have to be careful though, and not attribute everything that happens to me to Parkinson’s. The fact is I am 73 now and so some of this, maybe even most of it, is simply just my getting old. Also, my heart. I was told when I had the heart attack in 0ctober 2019 (tomorrow is the anniversary), that I have a leaky heart valve. I’m three years away from the time my cardiologist and the surgeon that did my angioplasty say are when I’ll probably need it replaced.

They say it can be done nowadays without opening up my chest. Lovely. Another scary procedure to be done inside my beating heart.

I have a book I purchased to write everything my family would need to know upon my demise. It’s titled “Sorry, It’s Your Problem Now.” I should probably get to work on it…