Tag: Parkinson's

Constipation

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WARNING: This post contains frank descriptions of poop. Do not read while eating chocolates.

Way back in November of last year, I wrote about mannitol, saying I recommend taking it “in small doses throughout the day rather than all at once.” This was because it had a strong laxative effect when I took a full day’s worth all at once, and at that time, I had no need for laxatives. But things change.

Several months ago, I rather suddenly started to experience constipation. I don’t remember exactly when, so I don’t know exactly why. It could be caused by my Parkinson’s Disease (PD) or it could be a side effect of either of the medications that I’ve started taking over the last several months. The first of these new medications is GoCovri, which has greatly reduced the fatigue and depression that my PD was causing. I also started taking Mirtazapine, which has helped to quash my insomnia. The fatigue and insomnia were my two least favorite symptoms of PD, so I’m not willing to stop taking GoCovri or Mirtazapine just to determine which (if either) of them is causing the constipation. It occurs to me now that I should be keeping a log of when I start or stop taking any medication, and when symptoms appear or disappear, or suddenly become worse.

Regardless of what’s causing it, this constipation thing is all new to me. I’ve always been at the other end of the spectrum – trending towards “soft stool” with relatively frequent diarrhea. I’ve never been one to flush more than once per “sitting”. But these constipation poops have been so huge and solid that they’ve actually clogged three different toilets (both of the toilets in my home, and one hotel room toilet). So now I flush after every second or third “plop” to make sure the crap doesn’t coagulate and leave me up Shit Creek (which would be a great name for a housing development).

For whatever reason, it wasn’t until just the last couple of weeks or so that I realized I could put mannitol to good use against my own constipation. So now I’m taking all my mannitol (one tablespoon) first thing in the morning. Most days, it seems to help. Other days, not so much. I’m thinking I’ll increase it to two tablespoons, and if that doesn’t do it, then I’ll ask my PD specialist about Over-The-Counter laxatives.

Aw, crap!

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This post is dedicated to all the Parkinson’s Disease patients who have to deal with constipation. It is also EXTREMELY juvenile. You have been warned.

I’m going to start a band called The Shittles. Our most poopular songs will include:

Feces Can’t Buy Me Love

Sgt. Pooper’s Smelly Farts Club Band

Magical Mystery Turd

The Poo on the Hill

All You Need is Fiber

Revolution # 2

Blackbird (Stop Pooping on my Windshield, ya Flyin’ Asshole)

Stink for Yourself

The Long and Winding Stool Sample

I Dig a Privy

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (While I was Trying to Poop)

Dear Poodence

Glass Onion

Happiness is an Empty Bowel

Free Speech For The Dumb

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When I was a mere toddler (not to be mistaken with a mare toddler, which would be a horse), I lived in Japan for about a year and a half. Living there while I was at the age when children develop language / speaking skills, I basically learned Japanese at the same time I learned English. I was as bilingual as a toddler can be, and often served as a translator for my parents, who only speak English. Fast forward a few years…I’m in 1st Grade…in Hastings, Nebraska. My speech (of course) seems completely normal to me, like any other Nebraska kid my age, but my teacher and my classmates notice something a little…off. The only language I speak in school is English…but apparently I speak it with a Japanese accent. So a decision is made that I need to work with a speech therapist. So, once a week for I don’t remember how long, I got to leave class to go practice talkin’ right. And that thar speech therapist gots me to talkin’ real good.

Fast forward a helluva lotta years…to the present. Ever since I got back from my South Carolina trip a little over a month ago, I’ve been experiencing voice problems. I’ll open my mouth and start articulating the necessary moving parts, but no sound comes out. There is only wind; it seems like my vocal chords just don’t engage. So far all I have to do is try again with more force (i.e., speak at an inappropriately loud volume), and then the words come out fine. But each time it happens, I am reminded of an interview I saw many years ago on 60 Minutes. They were interviewing Mohammed Ali, and I couldn’t make out a word that he said. Then I’ll remember that I’ve known at least two Parkies who had severe vocal issues shortly before dying. So when I went in to see my Parkinson’s specialist last week, I told him about the voice problems I’ve been having. He recommended I work with a speech therapist. So, once a week for I don’t remember how long, I will drop what I’m doing and practice talkin’ right. I have come full circle.

Insomnia and Other Happenings

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I mentioned a month ago that I was trying Yet Another Drug for insomnia, and that I would reserve comment until I had been on it for awhile, since previous treatments had worked initially but not in the long term. Well, I think the long term has arrived, so I can confidently say this one works! Mostly. The drug in question is Mirtazapine. My Parkinson’s specialist told me to take half a tablet each night, and to increase to a whole tablet if the half tablet wasn’t working after about a week. It wasn’t, so I did. After a week at the increased dosage, it still wasn’t helping. So the doc told me to increase it again – to a pill and a half. Since then, I’ve been getting between five and seven hours of sleep almost every night. Five hours is not ideal, but it’s a definite improvement! However, I still have the occasional night where I wake up shortly after midnight and can’t get back to sleep. Such nights are happening no more than once a week now, and I can handle them at that frequency.

Throwback Thursday this week will be part three of the Arizona trip I took a few years ago., with the conclusion coming a week later. There will be no Throwback Thursday for the two weeks after that. Instead of writing about trips from the past, I will once again be excreting near-realtime Trip Reports. This time, I will be road-trippin’ to the South Carolina coast, mostly in the vicinity of Charleston.

In other news, I’m considering moving again. House prices are going berserk here in the Charlotte area, and I have been receiving unsolicited offers for far more than I paid when I bought my home just a year and a half ago. The obvious problem is, I would have to pay an equally inflated amount to get another house in the area. So, I’m back to where I was when I quit working a couple years ago…pondering a move to Somewhere Else. I saw in the news recently that Mankato, Kansas is offering financial incentives to folks who want to move into their fine city. But “Mankato” sounds suspiciously like “Mansquito” so I’ll probably have to pass.

Hallucinations Re-visited

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I’ve been having a couple of vision issues lately that I’d like to type about. One is definitely Parkinson’s-related hallucinations. The other may be Parkinson’s-related, but I really don’t know. Let’s start with the stuff that I’m certain is caused by Parkinson’s Disease (PD).

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve had testicular tactile hallucinations, but not the visual type. Well, that’s changed now. It started several weeks ago, and so far, it’s been pretty subtle. I don’t get, for example, visions of Godzilla popping up right in front of my face. It’s always something in my peripheral vision, and it usually starts as an object(s) that is actually there. For example, when I’m sitting at my computer desk, I can see the side of my entertainment center out of the corner of my eye. That entertainment center will slowly morph into the shape of a human being. Regardless of what the object actually is, the hallucination that it becomes is always a person. These imaginary people never move, and they never say anything. Sometimes they appear to be staring at me; other times, they’re looking elsewhere. And I always know there’s nobody there, but I turn to look, anyway – I just have to. This happened very frequently throughout the day when I was at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It actually seems to have stopped happening now (at least for the last week).

As for the other visual weirdness, I’m not sure if it’s a PD-related hallucination for two reasons:

  1. It’s been happening for at least a few years now, and it didn’t stop happening when the peripheral vision people stopped appearing a week ago.
  2. I’m not even sure whether it’s a hallucination. It could be an eye health issue.

Imagine you have printed out a page of text. Why? That’s not important; stay focused, DAMMIT! Now imagine you have a serving tray that you stole from your neighborhood Burger King, and the tray has a thin layer of water in it. You take the printout and cut out each individual word, one by one. As you cut them out, you float each slip of paper in its place on the water in the tray. You end up with all the words in the correct order, and you can read the text with no difficulty. It’s just that each word is slowly floating around in its place, occasionally bumping into and bouncing off of another word. That’s what I see when I read text on a computer monitor – the words are individually MOVING. But not to the point of interfering with my ability to read them. Sometimes, some of the words appear to be throbbing – like someone keeps clicking the Bold button, or making small changes to the font and/or size. This has been going on with computer monitors for a few years, but on that day in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, I experienced this phenomenon with the printed text that’s posted next to the items on display. There was one exception. On one of the placards, the words weren’t moving individually nor were they throbbing. Rather, the entire placard appeared to be moving away from me.

This reminds me. I heard recently that there has been talk about trying psilocybin (the hallucinogen found in “magic mushrooms”) to treat PD. Seriously…psilocybin, LSD, and of course, THC. I doubt the federal government would decriminalize these things even if there ended up being positive medical results, so I’m not getting my hopes up.