What follows was written by Omotola Thomas. Funny and sad at the same time. She has had PD longer than I, and her frustrations are showing.
Typing under the influence of Parkinson’s: 3 things your doctor didn’t tell you.
1. Typing will suck! Don’t try to fight it…. it will progressively suck! Did I just hear you say “Well, I can just use voice-to-text“? Sorry to burst your bubble, but as your voice gets weaker with PD, so will the ability of the V2Txt to decipher what the heck it is you are trying to say. If, like me, you are prone to ending your messages with “xx” to indicate the 😘 emoji, your precious dirty-mind of a V2Text-er will instead type “sex sex“… And when, in horror, you hurriedly try to delete it, your tremoring fingers will accidentally hit “send“. Imagine meaning to type “Cool… Let me know if you want to do it xx” 🥺🥺🥺
2. When you see your friend’s distraught Facebook post about her dog that just died, you will try to show your sympathy by clicking the “😢” emoji, but instead, you will click the “😂” emoji , and each time you frantically try to change it, you will re-select “😂”. If you are wise, you will accept your fate and stop trying because if you continue, somehow… (and I cannot explain how) the next thing that will happen is that you will end up “activating” and inadvertently sending a highly inappropriate GIF. The frustrating thing is that when you do actually want to send a GIF, you will not know how to. 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️
3. When someone sends you a WhatsApp message, and you proceed to respond … They will see (on their end) that you are “…..typing”. They will see this “ …..<insert your name> typing” for a very long time, which will indicate to them that they are about to receive a long message from you. imagine their irritation when, after staring at “…is typing” for 6 1/2 minutes, your reply comes in and all you have managed to type is “Ok. Got it 👍🏾. “ 😐😐😐
Standing up to Parkinson's 