Thursday 19 December 2013

Opening your Christmas gifts with Parkinson's hands

The excitement bursts all around you like the sun moving from behind a cloud. It is Christmas morning and a pile of presents, wrapped in shiny multicoloured paper, is before you. Santa's been! You kneel down and pick up the first present...but that's when the problems start. Your tremor starts again and it is difficult to move your rigid fingers. You try to hold the present in your left hand and tear at a loose bit of wrapping paper with your right hand but every part of you moves so slowly (except the tremor; such is the dichotomy of Parkinson's!) that you eventually drop the present. "I'll try another one, it might be easier". But the same thing happens; the present, unopened, drops on the floor. As you try to open more gifts the pile of untouched presents diminishes and the attempted but unopened pile of gifts increases.

This isn't just on Christmas morning, it is every morning. Living with a disability is easier if the gifts of life are not gift wrapped (which sometimes removes the excitement of the discovery) but at least life is made user-friendly by adapting the way you live to your difficulties. That doesn't mean becoming your disability and not approaching the gifts of life; it means making the gifts more accessible to you.

Merry Everyday Everyone!

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