The Parkinson’s Whack-a-Mole
So I turned 70 years old. In social gatherings, when an old timer announces his advanced age, people applaud. I really don’t know why people do that. I mean, I really haven’t done anything to help me orbit the sun seventy times.
When I was teaching, I tried to emphasize the dangers of illiteracy and innumeracy. In one class I was aware of the unhealthful habits of some students, so I pointed out stats on drinking and smoking. As usual most did not buy it, citing the legends rather than facts.
“Mr. Maltese, I got an uncle who smokes three packs a day and drinks hard liquor every night and he is 82.”
I reply, “Out of a hundred people who follow your uncle’s regimen, how many do you think will make it to 82?” It usually does not work. Like the rest of us, the young would rather embrace hope than reality. I cannot blame them. When I was sixteen I felt I could drink a gallon of arsenic, smoke a stogie every five minutes, and stand in front of a speeding locomotive and survive. The young always believe that they are immortal. Time is also different for the young and the old. I was eight when I ordered from Battle Creek, Michigan a toy frogman (advertised in a cereal box) which, after loading his foot with baking soda, rose and fell in the bathtub. Hours of fun. “You will receive your Farina Frogman in four to six weeks.” Of course, the latter amount of time was always the reality. Oh how long six weeks was to an eight year old! Same was true when I had to wait a year to get a bicycle for Christmas. Simple math: one year over eight years is 1/8th of my life time. Now, when my cardiologist schedules my next visit a year from now, it seems I walk out of his office, get in my car, drive around the block, the year has passed, and I am back lying on the table and he is taking my blood pressure. One eighth of a lifetime is a great deal longer than one seventieth of a lifetime. Hence youthful impatience.
It seemed like it took me ten millennia to go from eight years old to double digits. I went from my sixties to my seventies in the blink of an eye. In fact, it seems like yesterday I turned fifty. What also seems to speed up are ailments associated with Parkinson’s. As Polley has observed, having Parkinson’s is a Whack-A-Mole experience. It seems that once one symptom reaches a plateau and I cope with it, another pops up. I woke up one morning and my left foot was shaking almost uncontrollably. After my diagnosis of Parkinson’s, my neurologist prescribes The Patch. Next Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem pops up. The Patch helps a great deal with the shaking, but pulling it off every morning reminds me of Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin as a spa technician rips a piece of tape off his hairy chest, and he yells “Kelly Clarkson!” When I first applied The Patch, it burned and itched (the adhesive, not the medication, is responsible). After removal, The Patch leaves a scar that looks as if a cat o nine tails had slashed the skin. The other guys in the locker room at workout marvel at my scarred back. I tell them the flogging was my punishment for not wiping off the treadmill after use. The burning has decreased (as the scar tissue hardens), but it still itches.
I tolerate the shaky foot and the itching Patch when another Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem rises. My eyes begin to burn. Parkinson’s people do not blink very often, so the eyes dry out and burn. Eye drops only make it worse. And the blindness (when the eye begins to burn, my eyelid closes, severely impairing my vision—often it happens in both eyes and I enter Stevie Wonder’s world without the talent) happens at the most inopportune times—carving a turkey, watching a touchdown pass, tying my sneakers.
I was coping fairly well with these afflictions when yet another Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem seeps from the depths of hell. My vocal chords go on strike. I lose not only my teaching voice, but my conversational voice. People bend toward me to hear me whisper, “You are stepping on my foot.” As fast as the moles pop up, I whack at them.
The latest Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem has developed over the last four months. I have recurring bouts of nausea, total loss of appetite (which has resulted in weight loss—a good thing, but I can’t see any way to market this diet). When we visit my gastrointestinal specialist, he says, with some pride, “With Parkinson’s the digestive system is the second system to be affected.” I increase my number of meals to six from the customary three trough feedings and decrease the amount of food at each repast to slivers of meat and spoonfuls of carbs and veggies.
There are days when each Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem barely peeps out of its hole, and then there are days like Thanksgiving when I was slinging my Whack-A-Mole hammer like crazy. My wonderful, beautiful family is assembled, Wife, Children and their Spouses, and Grandchildren. I lift my wine glass to make a toast, twisting slightly to scratch the maddening itch on my back with the chair back, and my vocal chords project my prepared speech about four inches from my mouth. I notice everyone is straining hard to hear and smiling, pretending they heard. Much louder is my thumping left foot which seemingly could drown out a New York City jackhammer. It is accompanied by a rumbling of my stomach as if a thunderstorm sprung up and is signaling caution about devouring anything on my plate. Simultaneously both eyes blink out, and I finish my toast begging for a cloth to wipe them.
You might find this hard to believe after listing my ailments, but I had a wonderful Thanksgiving—one of the best ever. Satchel Paige once said, “How old would you be if you didn’t know your age?” Tis true. Some days I feel like that child in the Bronx with his face up against the Macy’s Christmas window watching the toy Lionel trains. I think young. I am that teenager who can leap tall buildings in a single bound.And there are those Parkinson’s Whack-A-Mole days when I feel like a man who has made too many revolutions around the sun. What my seventy years have taught me is to be a stubborn cuss. All those birthdays (and all of the history and art and music and literature I have studied—and most of all my parents) have taught me is that you make the most of the cards you are dealt. Life does not promise that every hand will be a winning one. And I know that there are other players who have much better hands to play than I do. I hope they appreciate their luck. And I also know there are players holding cards much worse than mine. I pray for them. And I admire their courage. It is up to me to see the possibilities with the cards I am holding. At least, at the very least, I am still playing. I am still holding the hammer and whacking away at those damn moles and playing my cards the best I know how.