'Auld age disnae come itself' richt enough!

I was speaking to someone today who has only recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's. I thought it right to give her the benefit of my experience and my understanding of how to live with the disease.

Pompous arse so I am.

So I told her about the importance of exercise, doing exercise's to improve balance and how all things considered life could still be pretty good, at least for a while.

"Unfortunately" she said, "having one serious illness, doesn't give you immunity against other serious conditions" and proceeded to roll off a long and intimidating list of conditions that she was currently suffering from and which inhibited her ability to exercise to a decent, condition slowing, level.

She is right of course, having Parkinson's doesn't give you any immunity. Another factor in this is that Parkinson's is a condition that particularly impacts, and is disproportionately a disease of the old. And old age seems to come with a tribe full of conditions.

 At least Parkinson's isn't dementia.

Now I'm 60, but I genuinely feel 40. And my fitness levels are good, but this hasn't stopped me having to spend my life in Consultants waiting rooms or in the Imaging department waiting for a CT scan or MRI. And of course my other, non Parkinson's problem is becoming more problematic and promises to be both painful and humiliating.

There is nothing life enhancing about a Urology problem and I have had issues for approximately 13 years now and because of a long run of UTI's the next two months promise to be particularly unappealing.

It all started with a couple of kidney stones. A painful start one day, with me racing to hospital at 3 in the morning. The absence of pain can never be fully appreciated, until you have felt real pain, such as that generated by kidney stones making their way out.

Also in addition and due to the discovery of pre-cancerous growths triggered by the results of some tests, I had to endure 5 operations and some extremely painful moment's.

None of this was helped by having to endure  a vicious bitch of a nurse who took extreme pleasure in telling me how painful a procedure would be and seemed incapable of any empathy towards her patients. She also made a botch job of removing some stitches.

However my Consultant has decided that he needs to stick a camera into my bladder to have a look to see what's going on. I asked him if it would hurt?

"Yes of course" he chuckled, "when it gets pushed past the prostate it can be very uncomfortable". Which is of course Consultant speak for absolute agony. Great.

"Er, could we do it under anaesthetic"? 

"Not with your condition I'm afraid, it could accelerate your Parkinson's".

Great, Great, Great!

And in addition I have been told they want me to catheterise myself twice a day to ensure things are properly emptied. For the rest of my life..........................!

Isn't life just grand, discomfort and humiliation.

Did I say that life is still pretty good? Well better then the only proven alternative, but frankly I feel it needs to try a bit harder, because in all honesty, it doesn't seem to be trying particularly hard at the moment.

The title for this post was supplied by my now long dead great grandmother, who found old age a bit of a trial and was forever using the phrase. As an awkward, spotty teenager I thought she was being over dramatic, now I know she was underplaying things. 

In my opinion old age has too many hangers on.