Chatting with a friend who non-sequiturially (I know, probably a made up word. Report me to the grammar police) announced “ my eyes hurt, I’ve gained ten pounds, my chronic migraines have returned with a vengeance and I am this far away (she holds up her thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart) from all-out narcolepsy. My doctor looks at me like I’m soft in the head, especially when I end by saying I feel like shit ALL THE TIME.” You’re old, what do you expect?” I reply. That wasn’t very nice of me was it?

Another friend was visiting for breakfast the other day and announced, out of the blue (yes, another non-sequit-whatever) that “I can’t read anymore.” Whoa! Hold on there. That’s MY complaint. Seriously, no one has earned the right to not-read more than I. How bad is it? When I tell you, you’ll freak. Okay, here goes. I moved recently, and seriously considered not sending a change of address to – gasp – The New Yorker. Yes, the publication by and for those in the know, the cognoescenti, the appreciators of books, of films (don’t call them movies), of Paris restaurants, of Paris hotels, of correct opinions, of correct opinion-makers. That New Yorker. The one it turns out I’m just not that interested in anymore.

Nature abhors a vacuum and I suspect my nature required constant stimulation. You know, that undiagnosed ADD that I’m certain is part of my DNA. I have a recently recovered memory that at some point in my adolescence I took dexadrine “for concentration” but I think my speed-freak days lasted but a single year. I look skyward and call “Why, Mom, why? Whyi didn’t I keep taking it? Or Why did I take it in the first place? “

Does this sound familiar? Because I have an idea I already wrote a blog piece about my attention issues past and present. I’m feeling too lazy to investigate, and besides my leg is twitching away and telling me to lie down and not-read for a while. So I may never know if I’m repeating myself. I’ll blame it on the Parkinson’s. I’ll blame everything on the disease until I’m the person you cross the street to avoid, whose calls you screen and never return.

I was the kid who read the backs of cereal boxes. I wonder what I found so fascinating in words like oats, honey, riboflavin. I don’t know for sure that riboflavin was in cereal, but my inveterate box-reading leads me to believe that ribo-whatever was in everything.

So, back to the non-reading friend. I’m in a book group – which at the moment seems to make no sense for the likes of me. We read pretty much all genres – contemporary fiction, classic fiction, non-fiction on a wide variety of topics, American history (ugh, my least favorite genre. A bunch of people doing things with or to other bunches of people, things I can’t follow like wars, and conferences, and battles, and elections, and just for the hell of it, more battles. What color are the uniforms of “our” side again?

But I should be able to handle a weekly magazine, which I ordinarily might consume in small bites over the course of seven days. I’ve tried shifting my nighttime schedule from TV 7-10 PM and reading from 10-11 but I fall asleep at 10:00, making non-reading baked into the schedule like blueberries into a summertime pie. I flip the schedule but then fall asleep around 8:00 which is too goddamn early to go to bed, unless you’re six or you have a reason to wake up for the day at 4:00 a.m. to do what??? Go fishing?

I’ve read of some brave Parkinsonian souls who have eliminated certain pain-killing but sleep-inducing medications in the hope they’ll achieve better sleep hygiene. I’m many things, but brave in the face of pain is not one of them. I guess I’ll just keep experimenting and be grateful that I’m not one of the unlucky folks who barely sleep at all.

“Try audio books” several book group friends have recommended. My experiences have been uneven: I made it through one out of three. Most of the “fun page-turners” are neither entertaining nor gripping. I can barely make it through half a volume most of the time.

But there had to have been a reason for my obsessive consumption of cereal box literature, right? Maybe reading packaging is all my brain’s good for at the moment. Message to General Mills: Hire smart scribes to pen the messages on the cardboard that encases your shredded wheat and your corn flakes. You may just have provided employment to the next Joyce Carol Oates. And reading your exhortation to consume more fiber might be the most intellectual activity of someone’s day. Mine, for example.

Join me, won’t you?

You may have heard that I’m in the process of creating a podcast, an offshoot of this very blog post you’re reading right now. And you can be part of it!

Have you read that studies have found a link between PD and an increase in creativity? I’ve learned about someone who wrote a symphony, never having studied music. A consultant who’s now an accomplished painter. A gardener who’d never lifted a shovel. And a decent writer whose skills have risen beyond anything she’d ever envisioned (that would be me).

If you have experienced a surge in creativity after your Parkinson’s diagnosis, I’d love to hear from you. Please email me at andib88@comcast.net. I prefer email but you can also text me if you prefer at 617-775-7209. I hope to hear from you – and thanks!