A friend sent me the link to this article:
A Pianist Adapts to Life With Parkinson’s Disease: A Pianist Adapts to Life With Parkinson’s Disease. Just paste this into the browser. I cant paste the direct link, because it is embedded in another website.
I found this article interesting, not only because the contrast between this pianist’s approach is quite different from mine. Below is my response to Christian:
Very interesting. A quite higher strung musician than I am, whose ambition, I assume, is part of his dopamine regime. I already had retired from teaching, performing and ambition after the first bout of Parkinson’s “ending” in 2016 as soon as I went off the medications for my bi-polar disorder, which has “disappeared” as soon as I fully retired that year.
My playing is now better than before. The only symptom remaining is the feeling of lack of balance when walking and turning my head more than the body.
I have read that Nordic Walking is, after Bicycling and dancing the best physio to keep Parkinson’s at bay. So I just use my high tech walking sticks, also in town. I “dance” with them, varying the usual rhythm of 3 steps to 2 sticks to 4-3, 5-4 and 6-5 sticks. Those are my “gears”: The highest gear is 1-1, when it gets really steep. This is an excellent brain gym as well.
The walking sticks also give me more power. My arms are stronger than my legs, and I am one third faster than without the sticks and can go longer distances. I have used them for more than 15 years, although not regularly, so I did not have to learn how to deal with them. Now I use them “all” the time.
One of the symptoms of P. is that the arms stop swinging when walking. So when dopamine does not reach the arms to naturally swing, I swing the arms (dancing) to “produce” dopamine. With the sticks, of course, the arms are moving too. What the science behind this is, I don’t know. However, placebo can be a proven healer.
So far, I manage quite well without any pharmacological dopamine replacers and I hope to keep it this way.
Reflections 