It has been some time since I updated you on my curious course of living with Parkinson\u2019s Disease.<\/p>\n
The stiffness, funny gait, handwriting reduced to little more than a microscopic scribble, my voice hovering somewhere just above a breathy whisper, and the odd freeze when trying to navigate all persist to varying degrees.<\/p>\n
I consider myself very fortunate. Four years into this journey, my symptoms have advanced only slightly\u2014annoying at times, but manageable. Tremors and all, I remain up to the challenge.<\/p>\n
My recent discovery is how quickly my brain achieves REM (Rapid Eye Movement) level of sleep.<\/p>\n
Answering the Parkinson\u2019s fatigue often prompts me to close my eyes for brief naps. I am talking about that state that I call the \u201csubway nod.\u201d You have all witnessed that person with their head bobbing, clearly asleep, and then their eyes pop open from the jostling of the train.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t take but a moment, and I descend into REM dream state. It doesn’t matter where or when, as soon as I nod off, I am in dreamland.\u00a0 Trying to fight off sleep at inopportune times (at my desk, reading, or just relaxing) is how I discovered the RAPID REM. Coming back to consciousness, I still carrying the dream state into my reality. That phenomenon is a mix of confusion, embarrassment, and understanding.<\/p>\n
There is no rhyme or reason to the dream content other than it seems to be complete scenes for an epic movie\u2014something I have written about before. Dreams in Parkinson\u2019s world are full color, populated by identifiable people and clear dialogue, and always memorable. The reality that the REM happens almost instantaneously was, pardon the pun, eye-opening.<\/p>\n
As my eyes close, I never know where I will be, who I will see, or what will be said. I just know that the big screen on the inside of my eyelids is ready to project at a moment\u2019s notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been some time since I updated you on my curious course of living with Parkinson\u2019s Disease. The stiffness, funny gait, handwriting reduced to little more than a microscopic scribble, my voice hovering somewhere just above a breathy whisper, and the odd freeze when trying to navigate all persist to varying degrees. I consider […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n