Tag: Parkinson's

Hallucinations Re-visited

· 2 Comments ·

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.

Texas Trip Report (Days 4 and 5)

· Leave a comment ·

The dawn of Day 4 found me in the “NASA suburbs” southeast of Houston. Way back in 2007, I spent five non-contiguous weeks in this area when my employer at the time had a contract with NASA. This is the first time I’ve been here in the 15 years since. I only got about three hours of sleep overnight. That combined with a weather forecast calling for “the hottest day of the year so far” (over 90 degrees Fahrenheit) led me to decide that this would be my “day off” from this vacation. So I spent most of the day inside my air-conditioned hotel room, writing for this very blog, then just drove around checking out some of my old haunts. Nothing exciting or compelling, so let’s move on.

I am a museum geek. That’s not exciting or compelling either, but that won’t stop me from writing about the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS). I spent the whole day there, and I could easily go back and spend more time! The Hall of Paleontology is the star of the show. Most natural science museums I’ve visited had one or two complete dinosaur skeletons, and lots of individual bones. HMNS has probably a dozen complete dinosaur skeletons, as well as fossilized dinosaur skin on display. And it doesn’t end with dinosaurs. They also have skeletons of mastodons, huge extinct sloths and armadillos, saber-toothed cats, and much more!

There’s also a Hall of African Wildlife (current species, not dinosaur-age beasties). Unlike many similar museums where the visitor is in the middle of the room looking into dioramas, the displays at HMNS intrude in the visitor space, allowing you to see the dead animals up close, and from several angles. This is the best natural science museum I’ve seen, hands down. No, wait! Keep your hands where I can see ’em! Now wave ’em in the air like you just don’t care. OK, stop it!

I’ve been experiencing some strange vision-related phenomena lately. I’ll try to remember to write about them in detail once I get home from this trip. In the meantime, it’s a patty melt and onion rings from Whataburger for dinner.

Texas Trip Report (Day 1)

· Leave a comment ·

My airline-related fears have been confirmed. You may recall (or you may click here) that during my previous trip, I shared my experiences with Spirit airlines. During that trip, I also learned that Spirit will soon be merging with Frontier airlines. I used to love Frontier. Denver used to be their only hub, and I flew Frontier frequently when I lived in Colorado. But since I’ve lived in North Carolina for the last several years, I haven’t had much chance to fly Frontier…until now. For my flight to Texas (San Antonio, specifically) I managed to get a great price for a one-way ticket, with the caveat that there would be a 7.5-hour layover in Denver. So I decided to give Frontier another try. Today, I was disappointed to learn that they have already implemented several of the things that I didn’t like about Spirit: the uncomfortable seats, charges for both checked AND carry-on luggage, having to pay extra to choose your own seat, the tiny tray tables…the list possibly goes on.

As for the 7.5-hour layover, I still have family near Denver. They came to the Denver International Airport (DIA) to pick me up; we had lunch and generally roamed around the northern suburbs for a few hours, before they deposited me back at DIA. But wait, isn’t this a Parkinson’s blog? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Long-time readers of this blog (if such beasts actually exist) know that the single aspect of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) I’ve given the most attention, is insomnia. A few weeks ago, my PD Specialist prescribed me another sleep aid to try. There have been more than a few cases where I posted great news about a specific treatment, only to have it stop working within a few weeks. Therefore, I am waiting this one out. I will discuss this latest prescription once I am more certain as to its long-term efficacy. For the moment, I’ll just say that I woke up too early on Day 1 of my Texas trip, and that I think it was due to me actually being afraid of oversleeping since this was an early flight, rather than being due to any failure on the medication’s part. Regardless of the cause, the effect of this lack of sleep was that I did some pertty decent sleepin’ on both flights. But I also fuzzed out a couple of times – both of which were right when the flight attendants had the beverage cart next to me. “Fuzzed out” is the term I just now made up for this experience. The experience is like a kind of detachment…my senses are still functional, but I feel as if I’m observing (dimly) from a distance; like I’m not really there. Or maybe this would be more accurate: it feels like my conscious mind has unexpectedly stepped aside, forcing my subconscious mind to take over for it. Each time it happened today, it lasted only a few seconds. But it lasted a full morning once. In that instance, I was perfectly functional – drove my car, went for a hike, took photos – I just felt like I wasn’t consciously in control of my actions. Like I was being operated remotely.

Anyway…got my rental car, drove to my hotel, had an EXCELLENT dinner at a local restaurant called, I think, La Torta, ready for bed.

Florida Trip Report (Day 10)

· Leave a comment ·

Let me just start by saying, this trip has had the worst traffic of any vacation I’ve ever been on. During my previous trip to Florida, where I went all the way down the Atlantic coast and out to Key West, traffic was hardly a concern at all. But central and southwestern Florida have been a COMPLETELY different story. From Orlando down through Tampa to Sarasota: Massive traffic jams somewhere along my route EVERY DAY so far. So today, when I had planned to leave early enough to get to Sea World at opening time…I didn’t leave nearly early enough. But that’s OK; I didn’t stay all day, anyway.

I found Sea World to be similar to Busch Gardens, and not just because they’re the same company. They both have animal displays scattered amongst thrill rides. The difference being that Busch Gardens seems to be a little more about the rides, while Sea World is a little more about the animals…which seems to make sense. Officially, I came here for the coasters, but I quickly converted to the marine life side of things. I only rode three coasters (one of them twice). They were good, especially Mako, which felt like a cross between Intimidator and Fury 325 (both of which are at my home park, Carowinds). But I spent much more time at the shows and the walk-through animal exhibits.

I went to the orca show, the sea lion / otter / walrus show, and the dolphin show. Due to the show times, I did them all back-to-back-to-back, which led to my afternoon dose of Parkinson’s meds being taken an hour late, right before the dolphin show. So I headed into the dolphin show feeling tired and weak, and thinking that I would leave the park right after the show. But the meds kicked in during the show, re-energizing me. I stayed for another couple hours, and considered staying even longer. But it was dark by then, and I was ready to find some dinner. Some dinner that wasn’t worth blogging about.

I leave you with a quick video of a ride I didn’t fully notice until just before I left Sea World. In all my amusement park travels, I have seen and ridden many a river rafting ride and many a flume ride, but this is the first time I’ve seen the two concepts merged into a single ride…

Florida Trip Report (Day 1)

· Leave a comment ·

I need to find a way to skip the first day of vacations. That first day, often consisting of nothing but transportation, can be overwhelming. This one certainly felt that way. The day started like any other day – meaning that I woke up way too early. So I was ready to go, well before I needed to go. I dropped off my dog (Bear) with friends. He always has a good time there, but he also doesn’t like being without me. I tried to explain how long I would be gone, and why he couldn’t come with me, but Bear didn’t seem to understand. He just understood that I was leaving him. So I headed to the airport feeling a little sad that I had made Bear sad.

My flight was on Spirit Airlines, which I have never flown before. From what I had heard about this airline, and based on how cheap the ticket was, I was prepared for the worst. What I experienced was not the worst. But it wasn’t great, either. Let’s back up a step first: what does the phrase “check in” mean to you? Because to me, you check in when you arrive somewhere, to let them know you are “in” the facility. So this concept of checking in via the web, a full day before your flight, just doesn’t make sense to me. BUT, Spirit charges you an extra ten bucks if you wait until you arrive, so I went ahead and checked in online the day before. When I did so, I was given a choice: print the boarding pass on my own printer, or have the boarding pass emailed to me. I chose both. Neither worked, but at least it acknowledged the fact that I had checked in, so no ten dollar fee for me. When I arrived at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, I was able to print my boarding pass at a Spirit Airlines kiosk with no problems. So now…time to contend with the TSA.

I normally don’t mind going through the airport security checkpoints. That’s not to say that I actually find them to be effective or necessary. The fact is, it’s a screening process, and I’m a Process Guy. But there’s one thing that bothers me about it: without fail, every time I take off my shoes for a TSA security checkpoint, at least one shoelace ends up in a knot that I can’t untie. EVERY time! And it’s the ONLY time! It never happens when I take ’em off at home, just when I’m trying to get through the lines at a TSA checkpoint. So I’m trying to get this knot undone while also trying to empty my pockets, when I notice there’s something heavy and unexpected in one of my coat pockets. Oh. Yeah. I put Bear’s leash in my coat pocket when I dropped him off. We’re talking about a five-foot length of heavy, metal chain. As I placed it in the bin, I felt sure they’d see this chain as a potential weapon. I was about to initiate a conversation with the nearest TSA agent, to try to explain why I would bring such a thing onto an aircraft, when I noticed she was already looking over the items in my bin. She pushed the bin into the X-ray machine without saying a thing…so I didn’t say a thing. The agent screening the X-rays also didn’t say a thing…so neither did I.

Back to Spirit Airlines. The plane for my flight was an Airbus A320, but these were definitely not the type of seats I’m used to seeing on Airbussessess. These seats do not recline at all, have an ineffective system of bungee cords in place of the seat back pocket, and have comically tiny tray tables. Despite the inability to recline, I managed to sleep off and on through the whole flight. Beverages are another thing that cost extra on Spirit, and I was a little afraid of putting an open container of liquid onto that ridiculous tray table, so I went without. By the time we landed in Orlando, my throat was feeling pretty dry and it was getting close to time for my next round of meds. But I pushed on through baggage claim and the car rental counter, thinking I’d stop and pick up a drink at the first convenience store I encountered when I hit the road. This was a bad idea.

Almost as soon as I left the airport, I was on a tollway. And it seemed like every exit from this tollway was either a freeway or another tollway – there seemed to be nowhere to just pull off and try to find something to drink. Then I hit the wall of unmoving traffic. And I mean unmoving. This was not “stop and go” traffic, it was seriously NOT MOVING. By the time it started moving again and I found a convenience store, my meds were overdue by nearly two hours – which is pretty significant seeing as how I normally take these meds every three hours. So between feeling fairly crappy from lack o’ meds and being agitated by Florida drivers, by the time I reached my hotel, I was more than ready to call it a day. For my next trip, I’m using a teleporter.