Memories
My memory is not as good as it was. Specifically, I don’t remember recent events and names as I once did. Maybe that’s normal for my age. Maybe that’s Parkinson’s or maybe it’s something else. I remember things from long ago and I know others have the same experience. Long-term memory stays with us longer.
I remember Saturday morning kid shows on the three channels in Dallas. Shows like Lassie, Fury, and the Lone Ranger with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels. There was Sky King, Flicka, and Captain Bob with Howdy Doody. The Rifleman, Rin-Tin-Tin, and Roy Rogers with Trigger, Dale, and Pat Brady were part of the TV choices we had to make every Saturday morning (and before I had to trim the grass along the back fence.)
Out of the blue of the western sky comes Sky King! (With the Songbird airplane and Flying Crown Ranch, nowadays, people would “talk” about the relationship with his niece, Penny).
I struggle with new names from last month or from two days ago. I haven’t spent any time with my neurologist on the subject, it’s not bad enough to add a pill…yet. I get by because my circle of friends is smaller, and I am not in public for events as I once was. At one time, part of my job was to “work the room,” so remembering names was important.
I started humming the Lone Ranger theme song lyrics last week and I thought “Why now? What is this?”
The daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains fights for law and order in the early West. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The Lone Ranger rides again! Hi-Yo Silver!
How does one keep that stored away in memory and yet not who we met in the grocery store? Is this youth? Repetition over five years that happened sixty years ago? Love of the Lone Ranger? And what, if anything, does it have to do with Parkinson’s?
Impressions
I’m sure I don’t have all the answers, but I believe our retention has something to do with when we have a youthful brain and how impressionable we are. In other words, when our brain had more “neuroplasticity.” I don’t remember all the TV jingles, but I am grateful for how many sound bites I do remember and that’s good news.
The story of a horse and the boy that loved him. Fury
We are gifted with that early memory ability, with impressionable, absorbing minds, when we are young. That’s simply true. Things tend to stick upstairs early on in life.
Persons
It is not the fact we know this stuff that matters. All those experiences are part of how we came to be, how we “turned out” as my dad would say. All those Saturday mornings were a part of creating the whole package of a person; of living a life. Seeing shows about fairness, law, order, and justice is what helped form my youth, helped form me; and that is good.
Most important, however, is this: Why I was muttering the Lone Ranger theme song in the hall the other day had nothing to do with Parkinson’s Disease.
That is also a good thing.
I don’t want everything in my life to involve Parkinson’s Disease.
It doesn’t deserve it.
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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Dan Stultz, M.D., is a retired physician who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 16 years ago at the age of 57. He practiced internal medicine in San Angelo, Texas, for 28 years and became the President/CEO of Shannon Health System. He served as President /CEO of the Texas Hospital Association from 2007 to 2014 working on medical and health policy. He served as guest faculty at the Texas A&M Medical School in Round Rock and retired in 2016. He and Alice live in Georgetown, Texas.