When exactly it started with me, how long did it take to identify, was it by chance, the initial feelings…
It was like falling from a cliff, the feeling of “ WHY ME” remained for long. But the positive was that I can now start the correct medication.. and start getting treated.
At Start, the road ahead looked dark and cloudy…
The earliest memory of symptoms which were confirmed to be of PD relate to 2006. A friend would point to my slow gait at home. If I think back, it can go further earlier at least by another 10 years, when I used to have stiffness in muscles . It was sometime around 2008, while working in Odisha, I realized I am becoming slow, however hard I would try to walk faster, I wasn’t able to walk fast. There also started a sensation of being pushed from behind while walking. This led to anxiety. Gradually I started getting nervous on and off, nervous because I was not able to be my normal.
My place of work being a small town, I went to a few general practitioners who just wrote some regular vitamin tablets, and as such it didn’t really help.
I moved to Indonesia towards the end of 2008. As I was not liking the profile there, my settling down to the new place was getting difficult which led to some amount of stress. I could notice my symptoms getting more prominent but still under control. While standing, would face balancing issues and would need holding on to some support (wall, partition ) to continue standing.
One co-employee was keeping note of this and and related them to my drinking habit, though I was not drinking too much. He once mentioned to me that I must have a check on my drinking, as he noticed I am having balancing issues. I had nothing then to counter what he said. Though later, after I was diagnosed, on several occasions I thought of writing back to him informing his inference was so wrong.
On return from Indonesia, while living at Delhi, I went to several doctors including some of the best hospital, the diagnosis never went beyond Vitamin D and B12.
Had several bottles of aloe vera juice, hundreds of pouches ayurvedic formulations, nothing was of any avail. the RLS and the other symptoms continued. No doctor ever considered PD could be a possible reason.
I read elsewhere that unless investigations are focused in the direction of PD, they often remain undetected. One may have had similar symptoms, which are identified as PD, for several years before being diagnosed.
Slowly the symptoms started bothering me, I was unable to understand what was happening. At office in Delhi, I would feel nervous because I knew I was not normal and something else was happening to me, for which none had an answer.
The fear that someone might be noticing my shakiness was adding to my anxiety and stress. But overall, I was able to conduct normally in office as well outside. We were happy, regularly visiting friends and spending weekends with them.
I moved to a new job in UAE in 2010. The anxiety was increasing so was the associated nervousness. Some doctors treated me for restless leg syndrome. I started having persistent back and neck pain, the slowness and unsteadiness was there but manageable. I was treated with physiotherapy and vitamins. I remember once a therapist told me, that one side of my shoulder is stooping low.
Sometime in 2012, THE Moment came. I was on a regular visit to one Dr. Hegde, who mentioned “ it looks to me you might have the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, please see a Neurologist”. He was reassuring and said do not worry, if it there, have the medicines and it will go off in a year. The neurologist confirmed that it was PD. It was like falling off from a cliff. Though I wasn’t as aware as I am today of PD, I had an idea of how dreaded it is. The feeling of “Why ME” remained for long.
