Jiggle Legs

When I hear The Rolling Stones classic song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” I get it stuck in my head and sing it all day. I like the lyrics, “..but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.” Like many things in my life, I try to apply these song words to my life with Parkinson’s. 

One of my PD symptoms has worsen and caused me pain and discomfort. I used to brag that at least I am virtually pain free, I just move around a lot. My words have come back to haunt me because I now have interment pain in both legs.  It hurts when it happens, but I am lucky it is not continuous. It scares me. I have always professed, you can do a lot if your chronic disease does not cause you real pain. Pain changes everything.

Like many people, when I develop a new medical issue I research it and hope to find answers from  medical sources or online support groups. As I read the information on leg pain and Parkinson’s, I find that it is more common than I realized. The medical sites offer various drugs that may handle the pain, but I do not want anymore pills or patches. So, I keep looking for wholistic solutions to the varying symptoms. I have found a few.

The first thing I do is take a hot bath. Yes, even if is 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. On some nights, I have taken three or more baths to get my legs to stop jiggling. The next day, I feel like a wet dish rag. My body is tired from shaking and my mind is tired from worrying. I relinquish the next day to recovering and pray for a better night so I can get the sleep I need.

If the baths do not stop the jiggles, I walk.  First, I walk around the house, up and down the stairs and around the rooms. If there is still no relief, I walk in the neighborhood. By this point, my husband is awake and joins me so I am not facing the dark alone. By the time, we return, I am ready to try sleep again. Some times it comes, some times it does not.

In the meantime, I find myself pounding my upper thighs. In part, I am hoping to break the neuro circuit causing the shaking, but I am also just angry with my body. “Stop, stop, stop!” I know this  upsets my husband when I do it, so I give it up and go back to massaging my legs. Eventually, we tire and I somehow fall asleep.

Jiggles are a reality of my Parkinson’s. I do not want them, but “You can’t always get what you want.”