Welcome to the first official installment of Thymptom Thurthday (which may and/or may not be sponsored by Sylvester the cat). Under the ostriches auspices of Thymptom Thurthday, I will detail my own experiences with the many symptoms and side effects of Parkinson’s Disease (PD), covering a different symptom each week for the next several weeks. This week’s topic is anxiety.

Those of you suffering from PD already know that the symptoms change over time as the disease progresses and as you change and adjust medications. During the ten years since I was diagnosed with PD, there have been long periods of time when I experienced little to no anxiety. Now is not one of those periods. But let’s start at the beginning, and I don’t mean Genesis 1:1.

Anxiety was actually the first PD symptom I experienced, before I had noticeable tremors. Lemme tell ya: When you go to a General Practitioner (GP) and just tell them you have anxiety, it doesn’t even remotely occur to them that you may have PD. My GP prescribed Lorazepam to take “as needed” and gave me some generic tips on reducing stress. Around this time, I also started taking 5-HTP on a daily basis, and I started seeing a hypnotherapist once or twice a week. With this combination of approaches, I was still experiencing a persistent, nagging jitteriness (is that a word?), but it became manageable.

Eventually, the tremors started, and I was indeed diagnosed with PD. The first PD-specific drug I was prescribed was pramipexole (which I think I’ve seen on the menu at some Italian restaurants). The “prami” greatly reduced the anxiety while completely eliminating the tremor. But, as the bulk of my readers already know, PD does nuttin’ but get worse over time. After nearly 2.5 years on prami, I experienced a panic attack on the way to Charlotte’s Douglas International Airport, causing me to miss a vacation flight.

It was obvious the time had come for more drugs. I soon started taking carbidopa/levodopa (which I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the Swedish Chef singing about). The “levo” worked almost instantly, and it absolutely annihilated both the anxiety and the tremors. But again, PD does nuttin’ but get worse over time.

Over the last several years, I have needed to make a change or addition to my drug regimen about once a year. Most years, the driving force behind this change is a return of anxiety. To make matters worse, anxiety quite often exacerbates other symptoms. For example, it makes getting a good night’s sleep rather difficult, and when I don’t get enough sleep, I quite often am stricken with a crippling physical fatigue. This fatigue sometimes results in me not getting any substantial exercise for days at a time. And as just about anyone with PD will tell you, chronic bouts of acute exercise are absolutely essential in the fight against the disease. PD-caused anxiety and fatigue also make it hard to eat healthy, as I just don’t feel up to being on my feet long enough to actually cook something, so I eat frozen entrees instead (especially those with a lot of beef and cheese).

There you have it! My first crack at a formal Thymptom Thurthday. Let me know in the comments if there’s a specific symptom you’d like me to address. I don’t know yet what next week’s topic will be, but it’ll be somethin’ or other.