No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality

by Michael J. Fox

Parkinson’s, for obvious reasons, is primarily thought of as a movement disorder; resting tremor, slowness, or bradykinesia. For us long-timers, walking and balance are a bitch. PD is also a non-movement disorder; changes in mood and sleep, fatigue, difficulty speaking, as well as digestive tract issues. When our behavior even hints at any of these changes, we first try to attribute them to aging, or more often, we just keep it to ourselves. A Parkinsonian condition I rarely contemplated before now, much less spoke of, is cognitive change: loss of memory, confusion, delusions, and dementia. What am I thinking, and how am I thinking? What do others think I’m thinking? Am I thinking at all? Where are my car keys? Oh, yeah. I can’t drive anymore. You see what I’m saying. I’m sometimes frustrated by the effort it takes to recall simple words, like “respective,” or “anagram,”

cognitive decline is part of the disease profile, which creates a reasonable concern about eventual dementia.

dyskinesias, the spastic head and body movements that are themselves the side effect of levodopa, still the gold standard in PD pharmaceutical therapy. I