Keep your pecker up

Early on in my diagnosis, a doctor friend asked me how I was coping. I responded by saying that it is rare indeed to get from birth to death without some 'challenges' in life and that I was fine and had decided just to get on with things.

After all, I said, I had no real alternative other than self-pity, which is never very edifying.

She seemed surprised at my response. Perhaps it was the pomposity of it that caught her attention.

The British have long been associated with stoicism when facing hard times or difficult and emotional situations, the 'stiff upper lip' has become a cliché about how we deal with difficult and unpleasant circumstances. Particularly men.

I will admit that public displays of strong emotions makes me uncomfortable. 

When I watched the funeral of Princess Diana, I was surprised by the display of grieving by many in the crowd. Instead of a dignified silence, there was loud, audible wailing and crying.

It caused me to realise that what I had been taught and believed to be normal, correct behaviour, was no longer universally true. Some of society had moved on. Not I felt, necessarily for the better.

A feeling I get with increasing regularity these days.

No longer, it appeared to me, were people measured in their emotional response. They almost seemed to be advertising their grief. I found it distasteful. 

However the truth is that burying your emotions and ignoring your fears is not necessarily good for your mental health, as is made clear when we look at the suicide rate amongst men, who have long been taught as young children, that big boys don't cry, and to suppress their emotions. 

I certainly remember being told that as a child.

Young boys want nothing more than to be grown up like their father, to gain his approval and you never saw him cry. And you accepted that this is what it took to be, a 'big boy'. Emotionally suppressed perhaps, but it's what we were taught to emulate.

Typically it was the women in my family that made this comment, I don't remember my father ever doing so.

This burying of emotions can cause many problems, husbands and wives struggle to understand and support each other. Parents and children can become alienated. Relationships become stunted.

I was in the room for the deaths of my father, mother and aunt, and I felt a hidden pressure to show no emotion and certainly not grief.

My mother would have hated it if I had. My father would have understood. We had had a last chat, our last goodbyes, cleared the air of a few things, forgave and wept. But at his end, my mum was also in the room staying calm and unemotional. So I fought my feelings keeping them hidden.

And I battled the same emotions, keeping check of them as my Aunt and Mum lay dying. 

All of which brings me back to my Parkinson's. I now know more about what the future holds for me and it can include amongst other symptoms severe pain, hallucinations, depression and dementia. Certainly keeping the symptoms manageable will become harder and more complicated. 

So how do I now feel about it? And the truth is I feel nothing, simply a numbness. As if my mind is trying to protect me from getting emotional about what I can't change. I still say when asked, it could be worse, there are others who are worse off than me. And I believe it, it's true about how I feel about things today, but it's not how I feel about the future. 

My symptoms are getting worse, in addition to my early symptoms, I now struggle to swallow and need to be a lot more careful about choking. 

But what is there to gain by getting upset about it?

A long time ago my father and I had a round of golf on the Black Isle in Scotland and it was a typical summers day, wet, windy and cold. And I was miserable. An elderly gent, seeing me shouted "Keep your pecker up young man"!

Initially I thought he was being offensive, but my father explained it was a saying, telling you to keep cheerful, even in difficult situations. 

Well there are some circumstances when it's applicable, like on a cold wet Scottish golf course. 

Whilst it's not universally relevant, I still feel a pint with mates and a stiff upper lip has a place in dealing with some of life's problems. 

There's nothing more tiring than listening to someone whining about trivial concerns.

Things need to be kept in perspective.

Ps I have just remembered that the stiff upper lip is a Victorian invention, the Georgians were not known for being emotionally repressed. Quite the opposite in fact.

Society is always changing.