For the rest of the post please visit my new site. 

For the next several weeks, any new posts I put up on the new site will be duplicated over here.

For now, welcome to the new home of the PD warrior! 

Many people with Parkinson’s Disease experience a phenomenon we like to call, for lack of a better term, “Brain Fog.” It’s a slowing down of the thought process as the brain searches for a particular word, phrase, or memory. Sometimes it lasts for a fleeting moment, often while trying to think of a word or phrase during conversation. Other times it lasts a little longer, such as trying to recall a specific event, or trying to remember what task you were doing when you were interrupted just moments before.

When it happens to me, I have a physical sensation, almost as if my brain is trying to swim through water. I know I will reach my destination and the thought will be complete at some point in time, I just wish my feeble mind could do the mental doggy paddle a little faster. It’s especially embarrassing when I’m in the middle of a conversation and I have to pause, searching for a common everyday word.

My mind also has another trick it likes to play, something that as far as I know is not related to PD – something I like to call the “Brain Frog.”

The “Brain Frog” is pretty much the direct inverse of ADD -attention deficit disorder- a condition where people (especially children) can’t sit still long enough to concentrate on a single subject or task. When “brain frog”kicks in, my mind goes into overdrive and begins to work on several things at once, hopping like a frog from one thing to another and back, fully capable of concentrating on more than one thing at a time, something I have always been able to do.

I have been an accomplished piano player for as long as I can remember. I began taking lessons at the age of five, and it used to absolutely drive my parents nuts because I would practice the piano and watch the television all at the same time, fully able to concentrate on both without missing a beat.

Even now, I will sit in front of the TV and work on a crossword puzzle at the same time; something which drives my wife crazy. She has no concept of being able to mentally do more than one thing at a time. That doesn’t mean she can’t multi task, she does that with the best of them. She can have three or four things going at the same time and be fully able to keep track of them. The difference is this, when she is working on more than one thing at a time, she has to divide things into separate tasks and completely stop what she is doing to move on to the next task, only concentrating on one thing at a time.

The funny thing is, I absolutely can not physically multi task. That is to say, if I am working on something that requires physical labor (other than piano playing) I am not capable of doing more than one thing at a time. Perhaps that is where the PD comes into play. For example, a simple task such as walking for any kind of distance, requires all of my concentration. If I am trying to carry on a conversation with someone beside me at the same time, I will either run into something, or trip and fall. Go figure…

The other unique thing about the “Brain Frog” is that it absolutely demands attention, or I will start to get very cranky. When my mind is in gear, and all the wheels are spinning, I better have something constructive for it to be doing; crossword puzzles are a good thing, writing is even better…the more “creative” I am being with my thoughts, the happier the Frog is, and the less it hops around. That is to say, it hops straight ahead instead leaping from one mental Lily Pad to the next.

Hobbies such as drawing, painting, or my recently acquired addiction – woodworking – really seem to make the frog happy. They require both the mind and body to work in conjunction. The amphibian is pleased because he must analyze everything mathematically, and esthetically, then concentrate on blocking the erratic behavior of PD hands long enough for them to create  whatever it is that the frog has envisioned.