Asymmetry

I started making some playlists of Parkinsons related videos to add to the new Tremr YouTube channel today. In one of the videos as Michael J. Fox goes out to meet other Parkinson's patients he describes each patient as having their own version of Parkinsons. I think that sums up the weird cocktail of symptoms that affect us quite well.

In my version, a lack of dexterity in my right hand is what brought the disease to my attention and more recently I have noticed that my smile has become more crooked and that my right leg lags behind more than it did. Eventually I got round to searching "asymmetry Parkinson's". I seem to have spent a lot of time discussing unknowns and riddles in my entries so far so it wasn't a huge surprise to find the top hit is a paper titled "The mystery of motor asymmetry in Parkinson's disease". The abstract goes on to discuss the unknown cause of this asymmetric onset. The reality is that, even with recent strides in science and technology, the brain and its functions remain very difficult to study.

Since being diagnosed with Parkinsons I have found it hard to tell those close to me that I have it. It feels like something that needs to be said because your life is going to change in all sorts of ways which your friends, family and colleagues will find baffling if you don't tell them. As a thoroughly British man though, I have (with some exceptions) preferred to wait for it to come up in conversation. You know, that moment in every social situation where the person speaking interrupts their train of thought to ask in general, "oh, by the way, has anyone been diagnosed with any serious illnesses since we last met?" For some reason that never seemed to happen so, after a couple of years, I gave up on that idea and announced it using my Facebook account. Even then, it felt too awkward to be completely straight about it so instead I wrapped it up in a visual experiment where I showed three photos: the first was was the right side of my face as normal with its mirror image on the left, the second was just normal me and the last was the my left side reflected so that it was on both sides. Hopefully it will be clearer when you see the pictures!

An asymmetric leaf

On that occasion I was quite overcome to be reminded of how loving my friends and family are. One of my oldest friends even remarked how handsome the square jawed 'right me' was. Its a football cliche that you are never more vulnerable than when you have just scored a goal. I have learned that it is also wise to be on your guard when a male friend has just complimented you. My friend's message was sympathetic and supportive but balanced his compliment by saying that 'left me' looked like Dobby the elf from Harry Potter. This time I was determined not to look like Dobby so I made some new pictures. There are three diagrams below that show which way around the photo is. If you click on one of the diagrams it should change to show the photo.

I was surprised again at how different the two alternative mes looked. My second observation was that my friend was spot on, I am half Dobby. Lastly, I noted that in right-world I now have two paving slabs to get rid of.

The muscles on the right side of my face don't respond as well as those on my left so it is less expressive. This is called facial masking or hypomimia and is a very common symptom of Parkinsons. It seems I can look forward to a future of becoming increasingly handsome as my grin becomes less manic.