I didn’t really go anywhere without having somebody with me and fortunately I’ve got a fantastic family and friends and so I hadn’t really been that conscious of it myself.My roommate from college whos Polish English, we went on a holiday to Poland three years ago and she said you know, I, it was after that that it really hit home to me that I had to be helped up and down even down small changes, that I really was reliant on other people.And one of the horrifying things was that when I got a social worker from the PDS, who was wonderful, we notified the DVLA and everything that I filled in with her I was okay for so I got my disability allowances. But a small form to the DVLA, they took my licence away.Well look where I live, eight miles from the nearest town, a mile and a half from the village, I was absolutely stuck. But we revised it and sent it back and I’ve now got a temporary three year licence which was what I’d expected to get. I’d still don’t know what I filled in wrong [laughs] but whatever it was we undid it and got it, it was done within a month, full marks to DVLA they were very, very helpful.

Right well I first thought there was something wrong about probably getting on for fifteen years ago now. Almost imperceptibly I seemed to be losing the use of my left side and I went to the doctors, it never, it was so imperceptible no shake, no tremor, no nothing, I just felt that my left side wasn’t doing the things that it should be doing. And I had shoulder pain and elbow pain and neck pain and hip pain, knee and ankle and foot. And it got progressively worse and I kept mentioning it. I never went especially for it but it was irritating me, it was in the back of my mind the whole time. And so I got treated for frozen shoulder and tennis elbow and all those things, which I didn’t particularly feel were the cause of it, however they were symptoms. And then the tremor gradually began to show, all left side, nothing on the right side. And because I think I’d been such a pest I went to my GP and he said, I said, "Look you know this arm it’s really, it’s not behaving properly."

So there happened to be a trial on at the hospital, the local hospital and I went in there and it was a nerve trial and so they sat me down and sent currents through and apparently there was absolutely nothing wrong with the nerves and messages going through the nerve pathway and from then on everything happened very quickly. The consultant who, the person who actually did the trial I didn’t see again but the consultant who was obviously over, in control of the whole thing had me to go and see him and did various tests and things and it was determined very quickly that I’d got Parkinson’s. And from then on everything happened, that was about three years ago, yes three years ago. And the treatment since then has been absolutely fantastic, I cannot fault it at all.

One thing that I did find though, which was quite helpful, was that I’ve actually researched how I might have come about getting it in the first place. And it’s fairly certain in my case that it’s organophosphate poisoning from when I was courting and I first got married in the 60s and 70s. People, I come from Manchester and I’ve been a city dweller. My husband had long slow exposure to organophosphates which were in common use in every area of agriculture, we had stock. There’s no history of Parkinson’s or anything like it in either side of my family going back as far as I can trace, no shaking palsy, no, nothing like it at all. And I’ve been doing family tree research, as you do when you get to a certain age, and there’s no history of anything like it anywhere in the family so I’m convinced that that is the cause of it in my case. But I understand that there are debates about the genetics and the propensity and so on.

The physio was brilliant, it gave me, it taught me how to break the spasm, gradually increase the use of my left arm, improve my mobility by going up and down the stairs and it was wonderful as long as it lasted. I did so well on that and with the drugs that it stopped after a while but I gather it’s rationed anyway round here.

I had hydrotherapy as well from the same physio service and I should have been rationed to eight sessions but because of the nature of the work I’d done before I was able to emulate people with various different disabilities so I was used as a dummy, a model in the pool by the principal hydro so I actually got about three months, it was good, of weekly sessions

What difference did that make?

Oh that was wonderful, made me much, obviously I could do things in the water. Most of it probably was to do with confidence but it was confidence and increased mobility so that I was more stable for walking, I had a better gait.

One of the big turning points for me is something that I’ve been able to do privately. I went for acupuncture and that started last November. It’s five elements, classical, it’s five elements Chinese acupuncture and the doctor who administers it is a former consultant anaesthetist who retrained in China in alternative medicine. And I started going once a week. Within three months I was down to once every three weeks, then once a fortnight and I go once a month and my mobility and confidence, general wellbeing, everything is just so much better. People who haven’t seen me for a long time look at me and say, "You know you look great," right thank you. And I put that down to a combination of all the things but that for me was a major turning point. And I absolutely swear by it but unfortunately it doesn’t do for everybody.