Apathy [ ap–uh-thee ]  noun
1. absence or suppression of passion, emotion, and/or excitement
2. lack of interest in or concern for things that a person typically finds moving or exciting

Typically, non-motor symptoms manifest in Parkinson’s Disease well before the tell-tale tremors raise flags prompting to be checked out. One such non-motor symptom that hits approximately 40% of PD Warriors is Apathy.

And apathy sucks.

Actually, it’s just one of three mood disorder symptoms that can be experienced with Parkinson’s. The other two are Depression (sadness, hopelessness, feelings of emptiness and guilt, and in severe cases, suicide) and Anxiety (worry, tension, nervousness, feelings of unease, and in severe cases, fear and panic attacks). I’m not hit by either of those. Yet? Who knows, but for now…

I can trace my pre-tremor apathy back at least a few years prior to the start of my big toe dancin’. Where I used to be excited about going to work, learning, self-developing, and creating just became… meh. I remember getting frustrated because my life, seemingly overnight, began lacking passion.

It then crept into my hobbies. Where I used to look forward to going out to chase little white balls around wide open expanses of beautifully manicured landscaping (some people call it golfing) and then coming home to work on various DIY projects, I just found other “things” to bide my time. Looking back, I can see where it really set in when I didn’t care if I watched my Michigan Wolverines play football on Saturdays or my Pittsburg Steelers play on Sundays.

Flash forward to a couple of years after my 2020 diagnosis and it’s no longer just a general malaise with passing interests. I’ll coast thru various seasons — a day or two, a week or two, or even a month or longer — where I couldn’t really care less if I did a single thing all day. It was “work” to trick myself into being motivated to go to work much less actually doing any.

There are days when I wake up, grab a cup o’ joe, scroll the social media de jour, grab some more joe, and notice it’s already lunchtime. I’ll tell myself “Dammit. Grab some lunch and then get crackin’ on [insert to-do list item here].” After lunch, the afternoon then progresses as unproductively as the morning and before I know it, my FitBit is telling me it’s already time to start winding down for the day and get to bed.

UGH.

Now mind you, during these pathetically apathetic days, I’m having great ideas of things to do for work or to add to this blog, or a number of other things that would be totally cool to do or get accomplished. But I’ll suck it up tomorrow and jump right on them first thing in the morning. Sometimes it happens but other tomorrow mornings… not so much.

Yes… it’s very frustrating. I know what I want to do. I know what I need to do. It seems like a simple little thing to just roll up my sleeves and get to work at it. But it doesn’t happen. I refer to it as a glitch in the system where my mind and my brain know what I need to do and even consciously tell myself to get crackin’, but it’s like the memo or directive just doesn’t make it to my hands and feet to take action.

One thing I’ve found during these apathetic episodes is if/when I’m able to get my ass in gear and get to workin’ that if I don’t take a break and just keep going from finishing one task and moving right into the next I can stay pretty productive. It kind of reminds me of the movie Speed with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves where the bus has to keep traveling above a certain speed or it’ll blow up. Same thing with me… if I slow down too much, my day will blow up and I’ll be right back to scrolling whatever’s open on my phone.

Probably the hardest thing to swallow with this is not beating myself up over it. But that’s tough. I used to be able to keep half a dozen plates spinning all while juggling another half a dozen irons in the fire. Knowing that there’s a dude in my brain roasting dopamine marshmallows helps. But there’s still part of me that wants to kick my own ass for not doing what I should have been able to do.

What I’m learning though is with Parkinson’s… there are no longer any more “shoulds.” You take it a day at a time. You celebrate the victories and have grace with yourself at the end of a day filled with meh.