(source https://www.parkinson.org/understanding-parkinsons/what-is-parkinsons)
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects predominately dopamine-producing (“dopaminergic”) neurons in a specific area of the brain called substantia nigra.
Symptoms generally develop slowly over years. The progression of symptoms is often a bit different from one person to another due to the diversity of the disease.
About treatment against Parkinson's diseaseCurrently, there is no treatment against Parkinson's Disease, i.e. able to cure this illness. The treatments that are given to Parkinson's are (rarely) totally or (often) partially able to mask symptoms, mainly the large mobility ones, to be able to move by its own as much as possible, to hope to have a 'comfortable' live.
There are 2 lines of treatments.
The first line of treatments is to bring dopamine by ingesting pills. As the pure dopamine is not able to pass the blood barrier to reach the brain, the pills contain LevoDopa molecules which are converted to dopamine by an enzyme of the human body. But at a certain stage of the illness, even if the pills are made of a sustained-release drug dosage form, the Parkinson's suffers the effects of peak of synthesized dopamine and by lacks of dopamine neuron. Between this 2 states, the pills are well masking the main symptoms.
The second line of treatment consists of two invasive methods. The less invasive one is to implant a pump inside the body, which delivers LevoDopa in a continuous way to avoid peaks and lacks. The most invasive method is to deep implant two probes in the brain and to inject small electric signals that act as electric neurologic signals instead of chemical ones, but the results are the same, large symptoms are masked.
About Parkinson's disease and meI'm a Parkinson's since 2012 when I've received this bad news. At this time, I was 48 years old and considered as a Young-Onset Parkinson's (YOP) regardless to the age of the Parkinson's diagnostic.
At the beginning of my Parkinson's, I had not many symptoms, which were slightly. Mainly, the right side of my body was a bit slower than normal which give movements or fine gestures difficulties: I limped lightly on the right leg, no right arm balance, as I'm a right-handed person, I had difficulties to read me again when hand-write, to weld SMD components or to modify customer's PCB.
Over ten years, the firsts symptoms increased, like fine gestures, and some new others appeared, like member's rigidity and right foot tremor when I'm stressed and/or at the end of my treatment efficacy.
I'm still fighting symptoms with the 1st line of treatment, pills and rollercoaster effects, but next year, I will receive a pump.
About my jobI'm an HW & SW engineer, still working, but half part of time since few years. I work since 2008 in my current company, which is specialized in embedded software for a plethora of customers to design their product's firmware. My specialty? All about low level programming and electronics.
My needsWhen you have Parkinson's disease, you have to take a lot of pills by days to reduce symptoms. Due to the effects of peaks and lack of dopamine, there are periodic moments where everything goes wrong followed by moments where you feel better.
As the Parkinson's disease progress days by days, to mask the growing symptoms as much as possible, you have to adapt your treatments from every year at the beginning of the disease, to half of a year when you are in an advanced stage like me.
But it's hard to detect the moment of the days when you're on the top or on the bottom of the rollercoaster. 'Fortunately', there are a few physical symptoms which can be detected by sensors, as of slow movements when lack of dopamine or unwitting movements when peaks of dopamine. That's what I want to catch.
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