When Parkinson’s Causes Mayhem

It was one of those days where almost nothing went right and there is no one to blame except for Mr. Parkinson’s.

The morning started out well. We had our first meeting for "Twitchies without Partners" at 8:30 AM, with a very enthusiastic group of 6. The hour flew by and it was time to get ready for my "Sunday Mornings with Twitchy Woman" program at 10:00 AM.

I have been running these programs since March 2020, when everything shut down because of the pandemic. This was our 52nd meeting in 2 and a half years, so running the meeting has become easy for me.

When my tech assistant emailed me the day before and said she could not join me on Sunday, I should have recruited help from somewhere. But since everything else was going smoothly, I just decided to run it myself.

Technology disaster

At 9:30 AM, my Power Point presentation was working perfectly. The video embedded in the Power Point worked when I clicked on it. I had the speaker’s bio and was ready for the onslaught. Almost 100 registered for the meeting. We should have a good turnout.

9:50: No one has signed on yet. Hmmmm.
9:55: Maybe 10 have joined us.
10:00: Ready to go, but where is everyone? There were about 20 signed in.
10:05: Started the recording and began the program with 21 people. I introduced the speaker and tried to start the video. I clicked on it – nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. I ask the speaker to begin her presentation while I try to find the video.

I have the link but it won’t work when I share my screen. My hand controlling the mouse starts to shake, so my screen goes bonkers. I can’t find my Zoom screen. It has broken up into different pieces. My speaker is starting to lose it. People are trying to help me get the link for the video up and running. One of the women gets it to work from her computer and shares it with us.

When it is over, the speaker has disappeared. Her husband had logged on from another location, so I asked him to find her. Somehow she got booted off of Zoom and could not get back on. Eventually she finally logged back on. It was now 10:50 and the program has been a total disaster! At that point, the decision was unanimous to reschedule the program.

Parkinson's was to blame

I want to thank everyone who joined us that morning for being so kind and supportive, even when everything turned to chaos. It was starting to feel like the insurance company commercials where Mayhem comes in to disrupt everything. So many of you pitched in to try to make it work. You were not going to let Mayhem (Mr. P) take over. The Parkinson's community really does come together to fight back against Mayhem.

Afterwards, we just laughed. What else could we do? We know that Mr. Parkinson’s was to blame, as did everyone on the webinar. We have rescheduled the program and look forward to having a full house and a terrific program with no more glitches.

So take that, Mr. Parkinson’s. We will not let you win!!