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Showing posts with the label slurred speech

I Heard it Through the Grapevine

My neurologist is a very nice man. He listens well and is faultlessly polite. It is the sort of job where compassion and good observation are called for and he has both in abundance. I think we get on pretty well. At each appointment he asks me to run through a series of exercises to see how my Parkinson's is progressing. There's "play the piano" - hold your hands level and wiggle your fingers as if playing an imaginary keyboard. The Neurology pianoes were never going survive Andrew Lansley's sweeping NHS reforms as part of David Cameron's government's austerity measures and there is a slight downward trend in the number of organ donations in the UK. In another test he stands behind me and pulls me backwards to see how well I resist. As far as I can tell, he has never made the rabbit ears gesture behind my head or made silly faces. I suppose I don't really know but it doesn't feel like it. This test requires tr