PD and Impulse control (Part 3): The ER and the Blackberry Thieves

Vancouver August 2009

Two days after AK and I had fêted our mutual Leo birthday, I noticed that my mother didn't seem well. 

Against her nearly breathless objections, I called a taxi to take her to her doctor. She’d been suffering from COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) for several years and I was concerned.

I saw the taxi pull up in front of the house. No one except guests use the front door; we didn't even have a key to lock it from outside!

I walked down the stairs and along the path to the sidewalk from where I asked the taxi driver to wait a few minutes.

Meanwhile, my mother was just finishing applying her lipstick, having already changed into a nice dress, matching jacket and appropriate pumps. (Nylons? I don’t remember)

I called her impatiently from the sidewalk, turned to smile at the driver, hoping for more patience.

I turned back just in time to see my mother walking towards me. Front door ajar:  she was walking straight towards me. But the path curves left, goes down 2 stairs, turns right then down 4 stairs, before arriving at the sidewalk. She was headed for a 4 foot drop. I ran.

In his best “don’t make the family panic” voice, her doctor sent us straight to the ER (flagged: deal with this patient immediately).

It took 4 skill-levels of ER personal to get her intubated.

I sat quietly in the corner, not praying, (as I have no one to pray to) but sending as much positive energy as I could.

She would never forgive me if she died there, at the hospital, instead of at her home of 50 years.

She was admitted into to ICU with bi-lateral pneumonia and an uncertain prognosis.

AK arrived and, before going home, we went to Earl’s where I ate a greater-than-half-a-day’s calorie intake Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad.

In the lane from the bus stop to the house, an equally well dressed and lip-sticked neighbour I’d never met was accompanying her 5 or 6 year old blond granddaughter. Bucket in hand, she was picking our blackberries where they protruded through the fence into the lane.

I don’t recall my Self Righteous Speech about Private Property.

But I do recall the look on the little girl’s face as I plunged my hand into her bucket of our blackberries declaring: “I’m collecting taxes on the berries”. 

I then walked straight into the house by the backdoor.

(Personally, and upon reflection, it is possible that my blackberry-taxing might have been provoked by fear and shock at what had just happened to my mother, rather than PD-induced Impulse Control deficiency. 2009 – those were early days: I was still waiting for my official, conclusive diagnosis which would come soon enough in the worst of weeks…)

Parkison’s Disease and Impulse control (or lack thereof)

Commedia dell'arte: Mea Culpa Act 1 Scenes 1 and 2

Impulse control disorders (ICDs) are behavioral disturbances in which a person fails to resist the drive to behave in ways that result in distress or impaired social and occupational functioning. In Parkinson's disease (PD), ICDs most commonly include pathological gambling, excessive spending and hypersexuality. 

http://www.youngparkinsons.org/articles/impulse-control-disorders-in-parkinsons-disease

I’ve never been particularly impulsive. Oh I can be inspired to spontaneity sure. But I have always been more of a goal-oriented, planner type who might come up with an interesting idea then think pros and cons and logistics (as my friend Astarte says of me) before hitting the road. Bring on the next challenge I shout! then analyze it before taking action. 

Nor have I ever been known for having a temper.

Nevertheless…

Lack of Impulse Control Act I Scene I

One day last year in Senegal he had so outraged me that when we met head on at the junction of the balcony, the stairs down, and the pool below, the Pro-Con function reached a conclusion before I even knew we were making a decision.

• -        I could throw myself off the balcony into the pool.
• -        I could push him down the stairs.
• -        I could grab the cocky rose coloured sun glasses off his head and toss them into the pool.

Fortunately the glasses were tossed – though to my annoyance, he was able to fish them out (free of scratches) without even getting wet!

Lack of Impulse Control Act I Scene 2

Then today, waking to a sensitive friend’s text message about another’s Facebook post, I jumped right into the pool feet first, brain way behind. I leapt to a false conclusion and threw my friend down the stairs without even seeing what she’d actually posted for what it actually was. Then I tried to blame it on not yet having had my coffee (I drink decaf); on having a lousy computer screen and needing reading glasses (the latter are true).

I succeeded in hurting my fb-posting friend (and being publically and privately trashed by her friends) and I failed to defend the feelings of my texting friend or to make my point regarding cultural appropriation, adaptation, accommodation in art and life.

(Update)

Let me say that leaving Commedia dell'arte aside, underlying the posting was the issue of how “blackface” and the portrayals of black people in American culture most significantly, give rise to many feelings of repression, ridicule etc in the equating of Black with Evil:

From the Jim Crow Museum - Reddit Blackface Conversation http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/nov13/index.htm

And

Every Time I Turn Around: Rite, Reversal, and the end of blackface minstrelsy

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/comer/

and finally,

BBC Trending ;Southern US strawberry festival sparks a race row

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-32027487

A poster for a Louisiana strawberry festival showing 
two faceless black children has prompted sharply 
split online opinion over whether it is offensive and racist.

24 March 2015

Dr Parkinsons, in the Front Hall, with the Door Key. (a life? Part 2)

I might as well come clean before I go on grazing dangerously close to bottom.

It would be disrespectful to She said: He said (especially as he has no voice here. No access).

After 12 years, my husband and I separated. Simply put (a tremendous exercise in reductionism) It was Dr Parkinsons, in the Front Hall, with the Door Key.

In the early years we surmounted so much: difficult times and being from different worlds (Canada-Africa, race, religion, socio-economic and geopolitical realities, language, and separations due to immigration…). And 7 years in age as some narrow-minded people nudge-nudge-winked me. I brought out the best in him and he brought out the best in me.  

In the past there had been occasional lapses which rent the fabric of our Njakhass (patchwork) but they were always stitched back up.

And then Parkinsons arrived and I was no longer exactly the same me and nothing was the same.

It took a full year from when he broke my heart until he moved out. The last 4 months in Senegal were a long and terrifying period of isolation and vulnerability. Fear, just fear, without a specific threat. Clinical Fear.

And then an old friend reconnected (with "unfinished business"), recognizing me and making me smile. And a new one arrived (with her courage and humour in the face of adversity, be it hers or mine or another's) just in time to save my sanity. There were others there, in Senegal, who were supportive. Even though much was lost in translation, I thank them.

And now we are taking it amicably as best we can.

However this does not preclude mourning what is lost…

Grazing dangerously near bottom…(a life? Part 1)

Today is the day that I officially asked myself do I have a life within the limitations imposed by my condition, my disease. Or will be it the day I realise that my life is but the management of the disabilities that PD causes. I have tried very hard to have a life in spite of PD even with PD but sometimes it’s really fucking difficult: the physical pain; the fatigue; the brevity and unpredictability of being able; the anxiety, a symptom of Parkinson’s, undercutting my confidence; an unfamiliar (to me) weakness in the face of challenges.

I do not know the answer yet.

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Oh, the Turbulence below: 

the question begged to be asked but I'm still searching for the answer, tossed about by the undertow, my breath inhaled, still held