Yikes! A scary New Page

Parkinson's, to paraphrase a well-known quip, is not for sissies. It's not for dummies either. Here is the most recent page in my attempt to adapt this blog into a brawling, sprawling blockbuster graphic novelesque look at Parkinson's Disease. We are up to page 36, I'm guessing the final length will be about 100. Your feedback welcome!

Latest page

Here is yet another new page for the graphic memoir of my Parkinson's experience. I am completing about one page per day. Each page is a series of choices, from what blog posts will work in the comics format to what angle to view the scene from. Other decisions involve how to break up the text into visual moments that lead naturally from one to the next. Then there is the matter of formatting and editing, both for the way the story flows and the nuts and bolts matters such as spelling. Should you notice something amiss, dear reader, do not hesitate to alert me via a comment.

Parkinson's Disease and Eyesight, Notes from a Recent Telehealth Presentation

This is a tidied-up version of my notes from a Telehealth Session presented by Dr. Heavin Maier an Optometrist in Spokane. This was one of the more valuable of the telehealth sessions I have attended. There was a great deal of info that was news to me. I have tried to relay as much as I could here, but there are gaps when my attention wandered momentarily. I recommend that you visit their website to obtain a copy of the lecture on DVD or view it if and when they post it with their other on-line videos. Thanks to Dr. Maier for a comprehensive, well-organized and informative session. General vision principles We need to maximize vision as long as possible Vision is one of two main senses that orient us in space, the other is proprioception. As balance and other orienting mechanisms fail, vision can help compensate. Vision can help override cuing problems. For example tile grids or tape lines on floors that can help people unfreeze and walk normally when they see them.

Parts of the eye Sclera: Tear film is compromised by age, some meds, and reduced blink rate. Normal blink rate 12x per minute. Some people with PD blink as few as 1x per min. This will lead to dry eye. Cornea: dry eye will cause chronic breakdown of the cornea. Sensitivity goes down infection goes up. Iris: The colored part of the visible eye, expands and contracts to regulate the amount of light that enters the eye. Lens: focuses light on the retina. Vitreous humor: Clear filling of eyeball, that's where the floaters are. Retina: An extension of the brain there are dopamine cells here affected by PD. Optic nerve: over a million fibers that carry signals to the brain, which converts them to images. Comorbidities As we age we develop comorbidities, other diseases that affect vision on top of Parkinson's. Some of these comorbidities and teatments for them follow. Dry eye: Artificial tears can treat dry eye. Autodrop can help administer eyedrops. Cataracts: Cataracts caused by exposure to uv light. Cataract surgery very successful. Macular degeneration. Significant degradation but not total blindness. Glaucoma: elevated pressure in eye damages nerves. Diabetic retiopathy. After age 43, Focus problems. Get different glasses for different distances. Select different frames for different distances so you can easily tell them apart. Avoid trifocals and lined bifocals they can cause falls, confusion. Because of falls, shatterproof lenses are good. Pd-specific impairments Low contrast sensitivity: difficulty in distinguishing contrast. Sinemit helps. Filters help (like goggles for skiing) yellow, amber and pink.. Try them out. Double vision binocular and monocular. If you cover an eye and you still have double vision it's monocular. When the eyes work in tandem, the coordination can be thrown off by PD. Reduced visiospacial attention. Eye muscle movement difficulty. Quick eye movements are impaired and this reduces recognition, Abnormal color vision red- green distinction degenerates. Visual hallucinations. Opening the eyes while sleeping. Eye fatigue, can be caused by wrong prescriptions. Different eyedrops for different types or causes of dry eye. Many Pd-related eye problems can be helped by your eye doctor. talk problems over with them.

October Meeting (and a look ahead to November)

Once again it's meeting time. My plan is to deliver a cliff-notes version of the excellent recent telehealth presentation on PD and eyesight. There was a great deal of interesting information that was unfamiliar to me which I want to pass on. Then mark your calendars for the November meeting when we will have Yoga instructor Beverly Churchill in to help us with balance, strength and flexibility. I look forward to seeing you all at 3:30 in our spacious and gracious digs high atop the Pioneer Home!

"I pulled on a thread...

... and where has it led? Where has it led?" So while I was mucking around with the new font I made a discovery concerning the page architecture, the underlying structure I had set up that is the skeleton that the images hang from. There was something bothering me with the lack of flow that was occurring, a knocking under the hood, a certain cog-wheeling in the joints between the panels. As an experiment I broke a couple edges off the boxes containing the narration. The effect was much less claustrophobic. The page went from this:

To this

(Click pages to enlarge) Much better! The muses are pleased. But they have one little request, just a small thing... now go back and retrofit all the pages that you thought were finished with the new look. Muses. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Book report: One page at a time

It's always good to take a break from a big project. Breaks refresh your spirit and your eye. Recharged you return to the work at hand and you see you've made a Big Mistake. Good thing you're so refreshed because now you won't be happy until you uproot the Big Mistake (BM) and dispose of it.

In this case, I decided that the narration text should be a different font. The elegant Roman face I had chosen seemed too tight, too dense. Below is the old font.

And here is the new font

Unfortunately I already have 16 or so pages that all had to have the type reset. That meant redrawing many of the type boxes to fit the new type in. Just to make more work, I decided that since I had hand lettered the dialog in some frames, I should hand letter ALL the dialog to be consistent.

So I did. It could have been worse. I could have changed my mind about the text font on page 50 instead of 16. Good thing I left when I did. Of course I could still change my mind at page 50 and redo all 50 pages. Stay tuned.

Below is one of the pages you haven't seen yet. You can click the image to enlarge.

Graphic project update: A Triple Tribute to Robert Johnson, Skip James and Pam

Click to enlarge image

This is from page 16 of the book project. This panel is a triple tribute, to Robert Johnson, Skip James, and my wife Pam. Pam and I used to drive to work together to our jobs at the Anchorage Daily News. I would customarily time my meds so that I would arrive as mobile as possible. This spared me the embarrassment of shuffling across the parking lot beneath the Newsroom window wall. Not to mention making me more stable on the icy incline of the sloped parking area.

Unfortunately there were certain obnoxious side effects. There gets to be a point Parkinson's medications make up for what they lack in subtlety with power. This often put me into a mildly manic state that meant my long-suffering bride was often subjected to lectures on topics she of course cared deeply about- for instance the relative merits of bluesmen of the 1930's.

Often these lectures would be repeated from ride to ride, sometimes in fragments on the same trip in. Other favorite topics were state, local, national and international news, movies, and naturally, traffic reports. We referred to it as "Radio Pete" No commercial interruptions no volume control, all the obscure references you can stand. And no, we're not taking your calls or requests. Fortunately it was a short commute.

A Mercifully Short History of Bad Ideas

Don't be mislead by the title of this post. I have bad ideas to spare. In fact if you need any, call or email and I'll send you some of my overstock. This will be a mercifully short history because of the concentrated time period in which it takes place, not because of a sudden short supply of stupidity.

Our sorry tale begins on Labor Day. We had plans to go to the Alaska State Fair. My back was acting up for the first time in years and I decided it would be smart to stay home. This was a good idea. Probably the last one I had that day. Pam asked if she should stay home to keep an eye on me, but I didn't want her to miss those mammoth cabbages, weird looking chickens, and enormous hogs raised by improbably young members of the 4H club, so I said "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine." Stupid idea #1.

She wisely gave me a second chance to have her stick around which I declined citing the profoundly stupid point that I would likely be too proud to accept her help on anything consequential, so she might as well go enjoy herself and not worry about me. If you're keeping track this probably counts as bad idea #2.

Two or three hours into her absence my back began to act up with a sadistic streak unlike any thing I had ever experienced. After a long and inventive period of writhing around I discovered I could attain a measure of relief by lying on the floor and curling my legs up to my chest. Expecting Pam to return at any time I decided to kill the intervening hours by watching "Magnolia". Which I did on my back my legs curled up, the picture on the TV appearing upside down. You're probably thinking this was bad idea #3 but it was actually worth it. I love William H. Macy in this flick.

Eventually Pam returned and found me on the floor doubled up watching Macy get creamed by a rain of frogs. I lay down in the back of the Subaru and we drove at a smart clip to the emergency room. They loaded me up with 20 mg of Valium and when that didn't kill the spasms in my back muscles they threw in some morphine too. That worked. I even felt good enough to lecture Pam about how morphine was known as "Soldiers Joy" back in the Civil War, hence the name of the popular fiddle tune by the name of "Soldiers Joy". Music and drugs go way back together. Naturally Pam found this fascinating.

Armed with a prescription from the ER doctor for Valium to relax my back we drove to the all-night drug store, and picked up some little green pills. Boy did that do the trick! I became the very incarnation of mellow. I wasn't worried about anything. For instance walking around the house in the dark with a compromised sense of balance from PD further compromised by muscles relaxed by Valium. This led to a certain amount of banging and crashing as I rammed into walls and furniture. Bad idea #4? I think so.

At this point Pam began to get a touch irritated "What are you trying to prove?" She demanded. A reasonable question. I'm not sure of the answer. Maybe that she doesn't have to drive all the way to the State Fair for entertainment.

Sneak Peek: Progress on the PD comic "A Mixed Cursing"

Drawings ©2011, Peter Dunlap-Shohl, Click to enlarge

For years people have been prodding me with the question "Why not turn the blog into a book?" I usually counter-prod with the question "Do we really need another book on Parkinson's Disease?" Then several months ago I ran into two friends, Scott and Julia. Scott is a great fan of graphic novels, which is a highfalutin' term for fancy comic books. We were chatting about "LOGICOMIX" which is,among other things, a comics biography of Bertrand Russell we both read and enjoyed. "You have enough in your blog to turn it into a graphic novel", Julia suggested. I told her I didn't think so. The blog doesn't really amount to a narrative, the drawings aren't connected enough. The whole thing seems like a fragmented, episodic series of observations. Not enough graphic or novel. Or maybe I'm just lazy.

Later I was talking to my friend Steve. Again the dreaded book subject came up. I raised the usual objections. But he may have given me a way to focus that will work. "You treat Parkinson's Disease like an adventure", He said. Hmmmmm. With a massive, Herculean effort, a guy might be able to make that work. I've got about eleven pages so far. They appear above. above, in case anyone is curious.

One reason I have been reluctant to start a project like this is a fear it will interfere with blogging. Then it occurred to me I could post pages here from time to time, neatly killing two flies with one swatter. Page twelve calls, must run...

Classes for Alaskans Dealing With a Chronic Disease

Hello friends,

Below is a brief description and contact info regarding a series of classes being put on by the Multiple Sclerosis Center for those of us dealing with Chronic disease.

Better Choices Better Health Living Well in Alaska

This is a Self–Management program for those dealing with
Chronic Diseases. It is a six week course designed to bring
you hope, tools and resources. It will allow you to improve
your health-one step at a time. It begins October 12 and
will meet every Wednesday through November 16th. It runs from 6:00-8:30pm, and will take place at the Alaska MS center, at Providence Hospital. Pre-registration is required and limited space is available. Please RSVP by calling 929-2567 or email us at info@alaskamscenter.org .


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The Alaska Multiple Sclerosis Center (AMSC)
907-929-2567
3340 Providence Drive Suite 552 (Tower A)
Anchorage Alaska 99508