I woke early this Christmas morning - earlier than I wanted to and
much earlier than I had intended. PD does that to PWP; I'm used to
it, but I don't like it. I moved through the cool darkness of the
house, enjoying the break from the relentless daylight heat of this
unusually hot start to a Western Australian summer. The only sounds
were the shuffling of my feet and the muffled clatter of a sixteen
year old fridge engine that refuses to malfunction enough to justify
replacing it. Sometimes I know how it feels.
I looked under the tree. Nothing had been added during the short
night. If Santa had got this far south, I must have been listed with
the naughty boys. Once more there was no mysterious parcel marked
'To Dennis'. Another year gone, and still he hasn't brought the
cure. I'm used to this too, and I don't like it either.
Outside the darkness begins to grey into day as I slowly make myself
coffee and toast. I can smell the coffee in memory. I move coffee
and toast and a large glass of orange juice to the table on the back
patio. It is still very early, to early to have even taken my first
meds, much less experience my first 'on' of the day, so I move the
items one by one. It takes time - but what else would I be doing.
The patio chair is cold and slightly damp, the table wet with dew,
and the brick paving is strewn with the jetsam of yesterday's
easterly off the desert - Jo would hate anyone to see it like this -
but at 5 AM I'm not about to worry.
Watching as colour replaces that first grey light I alternately sip
coffee and orange juice, enjoying the contrast, and think about the
cure. It occurs to me that after nearly eleven years of PD, god
knows how many "wonder drugs'', dyskinesia, a pallidotomy and all, I
don't know what I mean by a cure. I don't really expect that the
cure will make me as new, and that it will be as if I never had PD.
OK - fine - but what then do I expect. Drugs that work with only
minor side effects, surgery that works for everyone and fixes
eveything. I just don't know. But I do know that whatever form it
takes its probably 10 or more years away. By then I'll be 58. I was
37 the last time PD was not a factor in my life. No cure can give me
back those 21 years; no cure will give me back the things my
children and I were unable to do; no cure will erase 21 years of
heartache from my wife's experience; no cure will reimburse me the
lost income from what should have been my most affluent years. NO
DAMN CURE IS WORTH PUTTING MY LIFE ON HOLD FOR.
Sounds only a 10 year old can make on christmas morning are coming
from near the tree. I better get in there. Later today there will be
a huge meal to eat, friends to greet and rivers to stroll beside.
None of these things are concerned with the cure or even with PD in
general, nor did santa have to leave them under the tree - they are
here, they are now, they are mine. Cure or no cure - this year,
next year, sometime,never - I'm going to enjoy what I have.
"Happiness comes not from having what we want -
- but from wanting what we have."
Dennis
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Dennis Greene 48/10
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http://members.networx.net.au/~dennisg/
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