Strategies when balance becomes worse

I had to start taking my cane to Rock Steady and I hate doing it.  No choice, really.  My balance, when I walk, is getting worse.  I do a lot of exercise so that my core is strong, so that I can catch myself - which I do.  All.  The.  Time. 

In the house there are walls and doorways, but outside...   First I just used my cane when it was crowded - mostly to signal to others to give me a wide berth - or when I was on uneven ground.  Now, I find that a cane isn't enough, and recently when we visited a farmer's market on a grassy field, I needed to hold onto my husband's arm.  Now, I'm using the cane outside all the time, and inside if I'm visiting school.  In stores, I can generally get a shopping cart to lean on, which is easier than the cane.

Then there's walking when we're camping. Walking while camping involves being on uneven ground, even the roads.  The trekking poles are great for this.  I can't carry anything when I'm using the poles, though. 

I no longer use a purse, because even a cross-body purse can throw me off-balance.  I've found a great substitute in the travel vests from Scott.  https://www.scottevest.com/
Of course, in real life it doesn't look as neat as the images Scott uses, but it's convenient and means that I don't need to carry small items in my hands - keys, wallet, phone, papers, sunglasses, water bottle.  The pen keeps falling out of its special holder, but otherwise the vest has worked well.

But back to Rock Steady.  Boxing, hitting the long bag, I'm fine.  But walking across the open spaces has been more and more of a challenge.  The coaches have been great, letting me guide them with what I want, rather than making choices for me.  But I feel much more secure with the cane.  Darn it.  Wish I didn't need it.

Remembering to take your meds

Many of us have medications, plus vitamins, plus supplements to take.  Sometimes they can't be taken together because of interactions.  Sometimes they have to be rather precisely taken or we get thrown "off" - that unpleasant time when we stiffen up, can barely move, have terrible tremors, and such.

I recently started Levodopa - and have learned the hard way what happens when I forget to take my meds.  I am supposed to take them an hour before a meal, or  to wait two hours after the meal.  Before, I never quite got the difference between "on" (when the meds work, bless 'em) and "off" (when the meds don't work any more, darn it).  I stiffen up and lose my ability to write or type without frequent and frustrating errors.  Before I started the meds, I had to just live with it, but life is SOOOO much easier "on."

(And separating Levodopa from meals really is important, since protein vies with Levodopa for the same receptors.  When I first tried Levodopa it didn't work - because I took it with my protein smoothie!)

So taking the meds at the right time is important.  But how the heck do you remember to take them?  I tried using the calendar function on my smartphone, which I can set for the exact time, and has an alarm - and even buzzes on my Apple Watch, handy when I'm not near my phone.

Except the alarm would go off, I'd turn off the alarm then get distracted...  and forget all about the pill.

This happened every. single. day.  So I needed a solution.  I tried several apps.  Dosecast didn't work after the first dose, offering the third dose with no way to access the second dose. Had to remove it from my phone.  Medisafe insisted I needed a password, and that the password must include an upper case letter (among many other requirements); but then wouldn't let me capitalize the letter when logging in, so I could never even try it.  Had to remove that from my phone, too.  (Appleworld problem - not as many apps and not as well reviewed.)

Right now, I'm trying Round Health.  No login unless I want it, easy to enter the meds I want to take, and when.  This has a window of half an hour around each dose - 1/4 hour before dose is due there's a message to the phone; at time does is due - alarm on watch; 5 minutes late - another alarm on watch.  This keeps up until you tell the app you took the pill or 1/4 hour after the pill was due.   You can click on your Apple Watch that you took the pill, or you can click on the phone; either way, it keeps track of when you actually took the pill.  You can also shift everything forward x time just for one day - think of manually shifting all those alarms just because you woke up late; I can really see using this particular feature.  Round Health has other features, but I'm not using them at the moment so not going to talk about them here.

Fingers crossed this is the one.

Images from Pixabay and Twitter.

Keeping track of all your favorite Parkinson's blogs

I have several pwp who publish interesting / funny / insightful blogs.  There are also interesting blogs published by Michael J. Fox Foundation, Davis Phinney Foundation, as well as blogs about other topics that I'm interested in.

You could bookmark them.  But pretty soon, you're awash in bookmarks.  And how often do you want to keep checking back, anyway?

Fortunately, there are News Aggregators to come to your rescue.  I use Feedly (actually, their free version).

You create an account at Feedly.com.  You can read your Feedly feed (like a news feed) on any device, but it's easiest to set up and add feeds on your laptop, not your Smartphone.  It can look like this:

Now, to add blogs that interest you.  Go to the lower left corner of the screen and click on         +ADD CONTENT.  You'll see this:

Copy and paste the URL of the page that interests you (URL= web address, starting with http...)  As soon as you do, Feedly will give you a choice of what's available at the URL, which in this case in the blog called Sitting Comfortably.

As soon as you click on Sitting Comfortably (or whatever you wanted), you'll see the title of the blog, the title of a recent post, and how often it's updated.  Click on Follow.

And then you need to tell Feedly how you'd like this grouped.  You can use groupings you have already used, or click on New Feed and add a new grouping.  Just click on the grouping you want and you are now following that blog.

I just leave a tab on my computer open to Feedly and update by refreshing the page.  If that doesn't work, click over at the left on All

You can set up the feed in a variety of formats, controllable by the top right.  Play around and see which you like.  There is much more, but this will get you started.

For more, Feedly has a tutorial.   For PD blogs you might want to follow, see https://parkiesupport.blogspot.com/2018/04/parkie-blogs-there-are-parkie-blogs.html