We tested quite a few things to help Dad out as the disease progressed. Some things worked, others didn’t.
Worked category:
Music: A major issue with Parkinson’s is ‘freezing’. They are not able to move. This usually happened to Dad while he was standing and we would notice that he wasn’t walking anywhere. Sometimes, he was just thinking. Other times he was stuck. The impetus to start moving didn’t get through to his muscles.
When we were lucky, a simple handhold would start things going. Simple rhythmic music was often a good solution. We set up a playlist full of marches (think John Philip Sousa) that we would call up on the Amazon devices. When we did, he would start moving slightly and then more and more. It was very helpful.
TENS: At one point, Dad’s shoulder was pretty hurt. He was on so many medications, we had to be cautious with drugs. His shaking was bad enough that surgery was risky. A TENS unit sends little electrical zaps into the applied area, stimulating the nerves. These devices are over the counter and they stick on your skin. The user adjusts the frequency. Since a nerve can only feel one thing at a time (it is how it was explained to me, don’t know if that is medically correct), the user can feel the buzzing of the TENS unit and not the pain.
It worked to a certain extent. As a bonus the shaking on that arm calmed a bit during the treatment.
Didn’t Work Category:
The severity of Dad’s symptoms fluctuated. Good days and bad days. Some factors that contributed are:
Medication (Major factor) - frequency and timing.
Sleep
Exercise
Diet
It was difficult to determine direct correlations so it was likely to be a combo of all these things. So I decided to get some data. I wrote an app for his Apple Watch that would measure when his shaking happened and hopefully the severity. If I could correlate the episodes to the other factors then we may be able to figure some things out. It didn’t work for a few reasons. (one of them being a very good reason - a group of graduate students working with our parents on a watch to control shaking).
My issues were:
He wore his watch on the non-shaking side.
For the watch to measure, the battery drained too quickly.
A group of graduate students from UW were testing a watch with him to control shaking. Two watches would be a bit much and might mess with their testing.
I never got to the point of him trying it. I think it would have frustrated him at the point I got to.
The things we tried are a major part of what I wanted to share. This will be a multi-part article.