The Fall Guy
I fell out of bed. Don't believe the rumors that I fell on the floor and bumped my head. Those are lies. Slanders. I fell out about halfway, just enough to wrench my back as my body twisted half in, half out of the bed. Now how could I, a man who has successfully slept for 12,000 nights at least, suddenly fall out of the bed? It actually has to do with #ThePark, and it’s one of the things that scares me the most about the disease.
To grossly and probably inaccurately oversimplify things, The Park is a miscommunication between the brain and body in a wide variety of ways. One of those is something I call vivid dreaming. I'm not sure if that's actually what it's called, but that's what I call it. It's where your brain, and again this is just my sort of googling-not-even-using-an-AI-search-enginge understanding of it, doesn't tell your body that you're asleep, so your body acts out your dreams because it thinks you're still awake.
This is a problem when dreams become violent or physical. Last night, I was having a dream where a pompous British man was accosting me, so I decided to kick him, as one does when accosted by a rude Briton. Apparently, it was some sort of Xtreme Chun-Li/Chuck Norris/Lorenzo Lamas massive roundhouse kick. My body, not realizing that I was dreaming, also kicked, a kick so hard, it kicked myself out of bed.
Normally, I use a 25-pound king-sized weighted blanket, which I think helps when these situations happen. It's tough to kick through 25 pounds of blanket. But last night I decided to wash my blanket, and it wasn't quite dry when I went to bed. So I slept without the blanket and suffered the consequences. Always sleep with your weighted blanket, folks. Always.
This goes back to one of my great fears of The Park: that through the disease, I'll end up hurting someone. I wonder what would happen if there were someone around me when one of these fits happens. What could happen if I'm in a hotel or traveling without access to a weighted blanket to restrain me? What would happen if I'm camping alone in the woods?
Even something as simple as sleep can end up hurting me or someone else because of this illness. I’m pretty sure I’ve kicked the boys in my sleep, but they bite/scratch me when I'm sleeping, so I think that evens out.
These vivid dreams are the one symptom of The Park that I faithfully keep track of. I don’t know how often I actually have these dreams (does the weighted blanket keep me from waking up and realizing what’s happening?), but I always write about this in my little journal whenever it happens because I think it's one of the scarier things about Parkinson's. It's the sort of Nightmare on Elm Street version of the illness. Your dreams coming to haunt you, to hurt you, and to hurt those who might be around you when you're sleeping.
It's a nightmare, but unlike a horror movie, there are no half-naked co-eds partying with you. Unlike a horror movie, there is no killing the villain. There's no sending Jason off into space (however he got there, I don't know. I assume he was exiled). There's nothing like that. This won't go away. This can't be stopped. There is no cure. No treatment other than piling heavier and heavier weighed blankets on me, pressing me into submission like a sleepy Giles Corey. This is my fate for the rest of my life: to go to bed each night wondering if I'll punt the lil goblin across the room while I'm sleeping.
