Mary’s Mailbag — Edited by Ivan Suzman

Note: Your comments, tips and suggestions on topics of interest for the Mailbag are welcome. Send them to Ivan Suzman c/o the PDF.

Hearty greetings from the wind-scoured coast of Maine! I am your new guest mailbag editor, a role that I am very excited to have picked up from my friend, Mary Manfredi.

Robin Elliott, PDF’s executive director, is hopeful that I can develop a fruitful association with PDF News & Review and its many readers. I bring to PDF News & Review both a science background (at one time I was a professor of anatomy), and my long experience as a patient (in March, I began my 19th year as a Parkinson’s patient, or “PWP”). Additionally, I’m a six-year veteran of the international on-line Parkinson’s email forum, PIEN (Parkinson’s Inter-national Exchange Network).

My goal is to contribute to finding the cause of PD; push for its cure, and — being an empowered patient — use the strongest possible advocacy skills for the benefit of the Parkinsonian community.

I hope, through the Mailbag, to bring you practical suggestions and ideas that may improve your life.

Straighten Your Toes and Stop Cramps
A common challenge among PWP’s is uncooperative toes. Either they twist up or they hook under. They prevent walking. Even worse, they wake you up, and you cannot believe how much pain you are enduring.

A surprisingly effective way to end these curls and cramps, while avoiding taking additional medication, is the application of dry heat.

Try pouring uncooked rice into an unused sock. After filling the sock, tie a knot at the top end. Choose a sturdy sock that can withstand a little rough handling.

Place the rice-filled sock in a microwave oven, and heat it for one minute. Remove and use as a portable, flexible heating pad. Under a sheet or a blanket it will warm your toes for hours. Or, to travel more comfortably, especially in the winter cold, prepare a rice-filled sock in the microwave as before. Wrap it in a lightweight hand towel, and use it in the passenger seat, or in your wheelchair, to relieve your lower back of pain, or to keep aching ankles warm. You will be amazed at how simple, safe, and effective the “hot sock” method is. It really works quickly!

Transporting Things Around the House
One PIEN member has devised a movable table to push around the kitchen or home office. For the carpentry-loving folks, try building a small table with steel tubing and white wheels that won’t mark up your linoleum. Or hook a bicycle basket, or a lightweight plastic box with sufficient room, onto the front of your walker. For use near your basement workshop or in your artist’s studio, you might try using a small shopping cart. Or how about wearing a “fanny pack” to carry many personal items, including a spare pillbox of medications, to your car or out on errands? Your hands will be free to help you maintain balance, to hold a cane or walker, or to open doors when needed.

And while I’m on the subject of being out and about, try an insulated plastic mug with a cover fitted snugly in place. Push a bent straw through the ventilation hole in the cover and enjoy your favorite juice, or ice-water, while you travel. This is especially helpful if your hands lose strength during an “off-period”, when suddenly, ordinary cups and mugs become too heavy to lift to your mouth. I carry my medications in my “fanny pack” whenever I travel, and I use diluted orange or cranberry juice to quicken absorption of my pills.

Relief from Constipation
Management of one’s bowels, I have found, is one of the most difficult and delicate problems that face Parkinson’s patients (PWP’s) and their care partners. Many of us face a gradual slowing down of the normal rhythms of the intestines and colon. Some PWP’s experience a loss of both the muscular control and the strength necessary for comfort and confidence when we are on the commode.

Some of the medications we take may add to the problem, by drying the body’s mucous membranes, so that passage of bowel contents becomes very painful. Bowel obstruction must be avoided at all costs.

I have used raw bran with great success, whether in applesauce at breakfast, or mixed into peanut butter for snacks or a light lunch. Drinking as much water as possible seems to help me, as well.

An herbal remedy I benefit from is Swiss Kriss tablets, to which I was introduced in 1996 by a former neighbor who is a nurse. It comes in tablets manufactured by Modern Products, Inc., of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Swiss Kriss is a senna-based vegetable tablet, designed for gentle and safe relief from constipation. Senokot is its well-known pharmaceutical equivalent.

It is not habit-forming, and contains no chemical additives. Its ingredients include a pleasantly aromatic combination of strawberry and peach leaves, hibiscus and calendula flowers, all finely powdered, caraway and licorice-like anise seeds, in a base made from senna. It might work as an herbal tea if all else fails. I take a half-tablet at night and a half-tablet in the morning.

A helpful resource on digestion and Parkinson’s, which also has wonderful menus for Parkinson’s-friendly meals, is Kathrynne Holden’s book, “Eat Well, Stay Well with Parkinson’s Disease”. Information about this wonderful dietician’s guide to better eating is available at (970)493-6532.

I last saw Kathrynne on the lecture circuit in Massachusetts, fresh from a trip to Australia. Her ideas are eye-opening. They should, of course, be tried in consultation with your physician.