To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question.

From inside, the tremor 'feeling' is like a bad piece of wiring like when a lightbulb flickers. The message I send from my brain flickers, sometimes jumping the synapses, often not. It took me some time to develop exercises that could fool the synaptic breaks: Slow continuous movements, like Tai Chi or Chi Gong, that I tailored to my capability.

Unconventional pattern

But there's a price. It seems stored up Parkinson's impulses in the brain manifest as pain during sleep. So when I woke up, I'd be almost rendered paralyzed, lying with pain everywhere from feet to head, yet unable to find the strength to get up. Every evening I would ponder how it would be if I just didn't go to bed.

My compromise is to sleep for a maximum of three hours at a time, in between which I walk and do slow movements. It's an unconventional life pattern, but it's kept me going for the last five years.