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Your StoriesYou are in: Leicester > People > Your Stories > The Reluctant 'Caveman' ![]() Keith now struggles with walking The Reluctant 'Caveman'"Reverting to a caveman", that's how a Leicestershire man describes living with Parkinson's Disease. Keith London led an active life but is now having to come to terms with a bleak future, as he told BBC Leicester's Julie Mayer. When asked what it feels like to be suffering from Parkinson's Disease Hinckley man Keith London , with no sense of self-pity, says:
"A cross between depressing and dreadful. Four times a day I revert to caveman status." Hard to think"I have trouble talking, I have trouble thinking, I have trouble making decisions... "This isn't very clever especially if you have forgotten to take your tablets. Everything revolves around a regime of remembering to take your tablets." Keith had always lived an active, not to say adventurous life. Listen: Interview with Keith and PamelaBBC Leicester's Julie Mayer spoke to Keith about his life before and after living with Parkinson's... Help playing audio/video "As a youth my interest was high-board diving... Since then, flying aircraft and gliding. But to do these things you need balance and that's been taken away from me." Early on Keith, a successful businessman, knew there was something wrong when he found it increasingly difficult to make decisions and couldn't stop himself from scuffing his feet. ![]() A delight now denied for Keith The final realisation that something drastic was happening to him came when he was training to do a half marathon. His co-ordination went and he couldn't run. Missing the symptomsKeith's wife Pamela says she mistook the symptoms for something far less severe: "I just thought Keith was being slipshod about things. He was forgetting things or not doing them. "He was shuffling around a lot... I could hit myself now. I just didn't realise he was ill. I thought he was just tired and overworked." Then came the diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease. Parkinson's is a neurological degenerative disease and Keith is one of more than 120,000 sufferers in the UK alone. Pamela has effectively been Keith's carer for four years: "I keep busy and try to do things for myself. Sometimes you have to be severe with yourself and the person you are caring for." No illusions about the futureFor his part, Keith has no illusions about his future, "Eventually I will seize up and lose my equilibrium and fall over. That's what the future holds." Pamela also thinks a lot about the future. The things they had planned to do have been curtailed, "It has changed the way the future will be." last updated: 12/05/2008 at 17:23 SEE ALSOYou are in: Leicester > People > Your Stories > The Reluctant 'Caveman' |
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