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30 Mar 2012 by Chris Boughton

When I started my degree course at college last September I originally wanted to study just History as a single subject. However, my nearest local college only offered combination degrees so I chose History and Sociology. The nearest college offering just History was about 35 miles away from where we live which is unfortunately more than my Parkinson’s disease (PD) allows me to drive

Peat and Pills

20 Mar 2012 by Chris Boughton

My sister recently stumbled across a website that detailed the family tree on our mother’s side of the family, going back to the 16th century. Our mother was born in 1931 in an area in the east of England known as the Fens, where her family have been traced back on this website to 1572. The Fens is a very rural, low lying, flat and open countryside but also has extensive drainage, with peat based soil, and is therefore ideal for arable farming. Consequently, the majority of the population in the Fens worked on farms up until around the early 1960s.

A week is a long time…

19 Mar 2012 by Meg Pinfield

People say that a week is a long time in politics. It seems it can also be a long time in Parkinson’s disease (PD). So much can change in just a few days.

On and off

15 Mar 2012 by Briony Cooke

Living with Parkinson's is a challenge, but it's never dull. Each day has its ups and downs; ‘on’ periods of intense activity when my medication is working well interspersed with ‘offs‘ when I have to wait impatiently for the next dose to kick in. The end-of-dose ‘wearing off’ has become a familiar daily event. It creeps over me like a vice, getting a grip on my neck and working its way round my limbs, cramping the muscles painfully. I have good days when I am mostly switched ‘on’ and bad days when my ‘offs’ are more prolonged or intense.

Poetry and Parkinson’s disease

02 Mar 2012 by Chris Boughton

Last week was the eighth anniversary of my Parkinson’s disease (PD) diagnosis. Not a happy anniversary to remember but equally one that is very hard to forget. Eight years ago I walked into the neurologists consulting room at my local hospital with a limp that I assumed was caused by a trapped nerve and walked out no more than 15 minutes later with a diagnosis of PD. A PD diagnosis is never definitive, as there are no tests to absolutely confirm it, but my neurologist was sure enough that he decided not to try and eliminate other possibilities via further tests like brain scans.

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