To Sneeze or not Sneeze

There is no question. I must always sneeze. otherwise it’s like the weird orgasm face without the relief. Why bother?

I continually off taking allergy medication. I put it off because I just thought eh, maybe later. My allergies weren’t that bad. 

But I knew that something might be coming. It’s a super bloom in California. With all the heavy rains here the flowers are just blossoming everywhere, which is beautiful visually, but terrible for the nose, the eyes and all the other body parts affected by allergies, seasonal or not.

The reason this relates to Parkinson’s disease and ADHD is both of them have decided to start working at the same time in terms of executive functioning, or should I say not working.

It’s an interesting situation. If it is not the PD that’s causing it then it’s the ADHD. They’re on a rotation schedule that I have yet to figure out.

When one goes on vacation the other one works, and when they both work together at the same time I’m really screwed. Often times it feels like I’m battling inside my head for control, stuck in the middle in this tug-of-war and both of them are much stronger than me.

It’s been a fun few months since my diagnosis of ADHD late last year. Looking at all the signs after diagnosis confirmation I wondered I missed this for the last few decades.

I always believed I had this disease, ADHD but I didn’t realize the severity of it nor what it really was and all the ways it complicated, interpreted and invaded my life.

Friends since my late teens had told me that I had ADHD. I just saw that as something that made me more interesting with my quick ways of speaking, the changing of topics frequently and the ability to get things done fast under pressure.

I never realized was the nefarious ways it caused me to not achieve my goals, to be delayed in life, resulting in my avoiding people and society. I didn’t realize emotional effect it had on me.

It’s only when I started reading the literature that I realized so many of my quirks, so many of the things that made me who I am all pointed back to ADHD and how it exhibited itself in my body and in my brain.

I say body because, when you feel something in your brain or an emotion caused by the way the chemicals and all those cool little things inside the fuzzy matter work, that parlays down into your very skin. You feel it at a deep level. The depression, the critical voices, RSD, all the things.

For those of us with Parkinson’s disease, for any of us, perhaps it was similar. Especially if the disease exhibited itself decades before an actual diagnosis.

There is freedom in that diagnosis, because you can do something about it, to the best of your ability, and to the best of what society, science and medicine have to offer.

Sometimes it’s what you can afford. And isn’t that some thing? To be able to afford healthcare, to be able to afford mental health care. That we must even question that, or think about that is astonishing. It is some thing I think about more heavily each day as this disease called Parkinson’s progresses.

So that’s my update after so long, because I’m lying in bed barely able to open my eyes, dictating this into the Substack app, with the remaining voice that I have.

I hope to bring you some thing much more engaging and informative next time around, particularly after that opening salvo.  Until then be sneeze free!