 |
 |
hi cyber-siblings i have put several previous messages of mine together as an intro to the pub-med abstracts on drug-induced psychosis in the following post -------------------------------------------------------- intro to non-physical symptoms part one -------------------------------------------------------- when my ex-brother-in-law, willie, was a child, he was part of a large, hard-working, loving family during his teen years willie witnessed a profound personality change in his father who became generally very angry and argumentative to the point of physically abusing willie's mom willie felt his love for his father turn to hatred a few years later willie's father was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died not too long after the diagnosis on a more personal and slightly less traumatic level during my twenties i shared an apartment with my then love maurice for about four years my temperament has always seemed pretty happy and easy-going both to me and to all my friends certainly i rarely got angry or raised my voice in spite of that maurice and i had horrific yelling arguments once in awhile and i can still feel the full-blown glorious rage surging around inside me from those fights finally maurice took note of the calendar he was the one to make the connection between our arguments and day 23 of my menstrual cycle it was like clockwork and i never made the connection for hmmmm 27 - 13 = 14 years x 12 = 168 months i virtually became another person i was angry at everything and anything no matter what maurice said or even if he said nothing it made no difference i just got angrier maurice could have propped up a cardboard replica of himself and gone out for a walk i doubt that i would have noticed am i going anywhere with these two sad tales? yep straight to my favourite subject brain chemisty we are all familiar with pd's physical symptoms and while some of us may be embarassed about showing them in public we are all used to and even probably expect some level of empathy, understanding, compassion and accommodation from the rest of the world for our physical plight however when it comes to symptoms which may be deemed 'psychological' or 'emotional' or 'cognitive' or whatever it seems to me that a lot of people may be tempted to rush in and make judgments and condemn such behaviours as 'nutcase' call me weird but if someone i know starts behaving in an extreme and hitherto un-noticed manner i find myself sitting back and saying 'hmmmm' to myself between 'hormone hell' and cd i have experienced a ton of 'emotions' that have been purely chemically induced and had nothing to do with my so-called 'mental state' i keep thinking over and over these brain chemicals are no joke medication induced psychosis is just that medication induced not a 'mental condition' and not even permanent we all 'play' with our brain chemistry on a daily, hourly, minutely basis fine-tuning and tweaking as well as we can the way i see it medication induced psychosis is as real a possibility for me and for any parkie as any other drug side effect it seems to me that constant vigilance and intimate knowledge about our disease are both critical to our well-being and to our safety i have to consciously work at the former i am grateful every day for this list for providing the latter -------------------------------------------------------- intro to non-physical symptoms part two -------------------------------------------------------- our brain chemistry is a living miracle it's a miracle that i can understand the words i am writing now it's a miracle that you can understand the words you are reading now let alone all the miracles that took place to get from me to you fooling with or making adjustments / changes to our meds can be, at the least, a tricky business and, at worst, a dangerous one if that miraculous brain chemistry 'stew' recipe is out of balance our symptoms, whether pd-induced or drug-induced, can manifest as physical ones or cognitive ones: nausea despair tremour drooling rigidity paranoia hostility delusions obsessiveness shuffling walk total withdrawal tiny handwriting olfactory changes frozen facial muscles full blown glorious rage uncontrollable profanity wild dyskinetic movements seeing puppies on the kitchen floor hearing things that go 'bump' in the night even tiny changes in our brain chemistry can alter the way we perceive our world sensually, emotionally, intellectually, hormonally, morally, you name it the range and breadth of potential symptoms is breath-taking and all caused by the 'recipe' being wrong: 'a pinch of something' missing there and 'a dash of something else' extra here so many of these physical and behavioural symptoms are still tainted by the associations in our minds with so-called 'craziness': 'psychiatric hospital' 'nut house' 'loony bin' and my all-time favourite 'insane asylum' but they are all 'just' symptoms of an imbalance in the 'recipe' and indications that the chef has work to do yours in nutziness janet ps my thanks to simon coles for all his hard work on maintaining the pd list archives at his site http://james.parkinsons.org.uk/ pps do you have a website? is it part of the pwp web-ring? mine is janet paterson - 51/10 - almonte/ontario/canada http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/ [log in to unmask]