14 Pieces of Parkinson’s

In celebration/commemoration of the fourteenth anniversary of my diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease, I re-published 14 articles of mine, one a day for two weeks. Here’s the countdown!

1. Ten Years a Slave – I wrote this on the tenth anniversary of my diagnosis, and it includes extracts from Slender Threads. As such it’s an interesting snapshot of strange times.

2. The Longest Wait – A piece I wrote for The Independent in May 2008, a few months after my diagnosis. It’s all about the future, of course, it’s just that the future is now. I wrote no. 2 of my 14 pieces of Parkinson’s for the Independent in May 2008, a couple of months after diagnosis. It’s about the future as it appeared at the time. Also here.

3. Whole Lotta Shakin’ – A blog post about my relationship with the electric guitar. Once my reason for existing, its place in my life’s firmament has changed and is changing still.

4. Love and Other Drugs – a piece with a dual life. The first is a review of the Anne Hathaway parkinson’s film that I wrote for Prospect Magazine (for free, incidentally), the second an extended version that appeared on my blog. It’s about representations of Parkinson’s in the media.

5. Care, Not Killing? Behave – a discussion about assisted dying and the rights of the chronically ill. Comes with a free piece of fiction, Sanctuary.

6. Vox Pox – a blog piece and article for a Parkinson’s magazine on the subject of losing one’s voice, both literally and metaphorically.

7. Lefty Langman – in 2013, I batted left-handed for a season, and raised almost £3,000 for Parkinson’s UK in the process. This is the first of a series of columns I wrote for All Out Cricket on the subject.

8. Mental as Fuck – one example of the frankly ridiculous amounts of times that I was abused in the streets because of my Parkinson’s. This incident ended quite well. Many others did not.

9. I Have Something to Tell You – It’s a strange experience, hearing the words ‘you have Parkinson’s’, and many find the attitude of their neurologist questionable, to say the least. After you’ve told a couple of hundred people yourself, however, their blasé approach begins to make a little more sense!

10. Indisability – it’s very odd having a disability that people often cannot see, when to you it’s stark-staringly obvious. It’s both galling and irritating, but occasionally, just occasionally, something happens that makes you feel a little more sympathetic.

11. The Disability Diaries – an interview for the Guardian based on a group of people with various disabilities keeping a discrimination diary. Also my commentary on the process.

12. Living with Young Onset PD – A piece written for The Wellcome Trust.

13. Dating with Dopamine – a scurrilous and titillating discussion of some rather more common than you might think side-effects of a common treatment of parkinson’s, dopamine agonists: compulsive behaviours. Comes with an extra article on shhh! Sex! See also The Agonists and the Ecstacy.

14. Parkinson’s and Corona – the ghost of Parky futures. An article in The Independent from the middle of 2020 about living with uncertainty and the ramifications for mental health (also here).

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