What to you do when you have trouble comunicating

Hi @redtail. I don't know what is going on in your case, but I will add some thoughts from my experience with Parkinsons. I find is often hard to figure out what the basis for new developments. Early in my experience, I panicked that a new development was in fact the disease progressing. However, it can be some unrelated cold I did not realize I was fighting or due to a particularly stressful period. In your case, a hospital tends to bring out stress and can make symptoms more pronounced. I am not a doctor, but there are options for treating stress or anxiety that you may want to consider. Good luck!

hello @redtail my symptoms (tremors) also are more pronounced at doctor's appointments. I'm only 54. two suggestions i have. 1. do you have a good friend that knows your situation and is willing to help at appts. 2. look into beech band watch the videos--its worth a try. it helps with my tremors it might help you.

I agree having friend or family member go along with you to at least some appointments, even just one or two, would be helpful.

Staff and doctors seem to pay a little more attention if there is a second person with you. You second person can also help to fill in or smooth over the gaps in the conversation. I think a second person accompanying you reduces the tension for all concerned. A second person could help you to explain what you yourself find difficult to explain.

For me, a big part of living with this illness is becoming conscious of how it affects me, and accepting support, and asking for support, from others.

Best wishes!

My wife goes with me to my doctors visits and I find it uncomfortable when they speak and ask her the questions ( I can usually speak, though sometimes slow while trying to think of what I am saying, but it is nice for them to also speak to me. They usually do but not enough.

I have memory propblems and sometimes forget what I was going to say before Ieven get to the verb in the sentence I had begun. . But, to the extent that you can, if you try to commit the thought to paper, there may be enough clues in it to give the doctor a hint ofwhat you want to tell himabout . Just the act of writing it down may help you remember it. because it's giving you some muscle memory Itwon't work 100% of the time, -sometimes I look at what I've put on paper - and ask mysself, "I wonder what I meant by this?" later. BUT one good thing that could come from showing your gibberish to the doctor is that the gibberish itself may be enough to give him a clue - because the writing of some PD patients becomes tinier and tinier . Then, of course ther's the option of Charades if you're truly desperate. I'm only half joking. Memory is stored in a number of ways . for instance muscle memory is the reason (at least in my prime) I could type without looking at the keyboard. When one of my grandson's was 5, he decided he wanted to write a story (His 9 year-old-sister had been wworking on a story and I had been helping her edit it. )But at 5, he really didn't have a good way of 'writing' a story, so I told hm him all he had to do was talk and I would type it for him. He thought it was magic! but I think it's related to muscle memory. Once I was at the bank and didn't remember my password for something but I could ltype it if I had access to a keyboard. Unfortunately, I live in Germany and the keyboards for German speakers aren't the same as they are for ENglish speakers. If they had been the same, I woln't have had to have gone back home to look it up. I don't know if you've ever heard of people who are afraid they'll forget something so they tie a string around their finger to help them remember. It may just be a supersticion but that sort of thing has some credibility, And from time to time I've seen some people who hold workshops to teach business people how to remember names of folks they meet. and some of the techniques involve associating the person's name with some characterisric of the person. If you get really desperate, you could try Charades.I find myself doing that when there's something I want to tell lmy husband (and unfortunately the only part of the thought I had earlier that I felt was really important was the only part I remembered., so we have oru own little flight into silliness but sometimes that renegade thought is wrestled to the ground in the course of our charades. (When I was a kid, and the class got too noisy for the teacher to bear, sshe would make us write "I will not talk in class " 100 times I wonder if the punishment aspect of it wasn't her only objective. I wonder it she also thought that it would help us remember not to talk in class.

@jatonlouise that is some good points you made

Gotta tell you what I did last night. I had meant to put in my hearing aids after my shower, but I had forgotten. Every time I thought about it, before I could get my hindquarters up andto go get them I had f orgotten why I was headed for the bedroom. So, the next time I rememberd, I stood up fr om my chair, put my finger in my ear, and headed for the bedroom - maybe 15 sseconds away from where I had been sitting. It worked (at eleast for long enough to finally accomplish my mission. If I had b een gone too long and it hadn't worked I can just imagine the look on my husband's face when he tracked me down, standing in the midddle of the beroom with one finger stuck in my ear......

jatonlouise,

Hope you take this the right way but my thinking about you walking around with your finger in your ear and not being able to explain why made me laugh!

It might be a good idea to tell him about this for future reference.

@kshansen I believe the one thing everybody nneeds is more laughter in their lives. so I'm GLAD it made you laugh. Sometimes I've done things that make folks lauagh, literallu, for decades In fact,there's one very memorable story from 40 years ago that still makes me laugh, so I'm hoping I don't get to a point where I've forgottn it. I doube that icould ever forget it. I don't know which of the 2 of us were lauging - shs was laughing becase of what I did and I laguhed because she was so totally out of control laughing. I'm going to take the liberty of being an old lady who believes that Laughter is sthe best Medicine. So,this happened 40 years ago. At the time, I was 40, and I had a bright red Fiero (it was the poor woman's Corvette. ) It was an especially harsh winter day in Northern Virginina and a young woman who worked for me and I were leaving at he same time. When I got to my car, the lokk on thedoor on the driver's side wa frozzen shut. The Fiero was a 2 seater, with a huge hump beteen the seats. I am (or was them) 5'8" and was a long legged woman. I was wearing a huge down coat, had on boots. and I had word a suit -with a skir- to woek that day. I clearly couldn'dt get in on the driver's side so my only option was to get into the passenger seat and try to get myself situated into the driver's seat and all would be good. A Fiero is wery close to th ground and Icouldn't begin to get into one now. . The boots and the coat were a significat impediment, but if I took my coat off, I d freeze my own self. To fully appreciate this, you must understand that I have always haad troble sorting out 3-dimensional things, so it was harder for me to imagine a solution for getting my legs over the hump (which I might have have been able to if I could have opened the door but I wouldn/t very well do that. Imagine a loong, tall giant trying to fold up small enough to geet into the car, but the car wasn't big enough to let him unfold his body and get into a position where he could actually drive the caar My long legs flailing all over the place, my boots impening my movements significantly (and, of course, I hae the longest feet in all of hrisstendom. Noe of my body parts were going in the same direction, and th fact that I was worried about Tammy because she was laughting so hard I was afraid she was going to pass out and she sure wasn't any help to me in that state Idon't know what she could have done to help, expecially since she's half my size. I had found a convenient paking spot that morning, very near the door, so everyone who worked in the buidling got to see the +Tammy and Jaton' Show. It remided me of Lucy and Ethyl at the pie shop (or maybe a cake shop) trying to keep up with the conveyer belt. She kept laughing at me (because I imagine i was rather funny; and I kept laughing at her because she was laughing so hard. All we have to do is set eyes on one another and we laugh remembering that time. It's a good thing I live in Berlin and she lives in Texas because we would probably have died laughing if we had been next door neighbors.