So where have I been up to? Well, that’s a multi-part story:

1. First, I had some “minor” toe surgery in April. I won’t go into the details (even though it might have been classified as minor, it was gross and hurt like the dickens!) That put me out of commission for a few weeks… And it took a LONG time for that to heal – in fact, even now it isn’t completely healed up – although it doesn’t bother me anymore, thank goodness! 

2. In May, my wife and I went on a road trip to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. This was in celebration of our 25th anniversary! Those who know me may say, “Wait a minute, Tom – isn’t your anniversary in June, not May?” Yes it is, and the first reason we went in May was that kids (or, as the cashier lady at Wall Drug in SD called them, “knee-high terrors”) were still in school, so we hoped there would be less families – therefore less people – at the sites… Yeah, it was busy, but not too busy, thank goodness. And you’ll see the second reason in #3 below.  

Anyway, I digress… We had a great time there in SD – Mount Rushmore was AWESOME, and the Badlands were kinda wierd but really cool – even saw some of the buffalo inside the park! But the drive to and from SD was not easy for this old Parkie – with the ever progressing disease, it was extremely difficult riding in the car for those long periods – but we made it!

3. In early June, I had finger surgery done on my left index finger (that was the day AFTER our official anniversary, so that’s the other reason why we went to SD in May). Due to arthritis (and most likely PD too, as the left hand is where my first dystonia symptoms appeared), the middle joint of the finger was gone – it had worn away completely, and was just bone-on-bone. Plus, it had swollen up almost twice as big as normal due to the collection of bone material. This caused me a good deal of pain, especially when I’d bang it up against something (OUCH!). In addition, because of the extra bone around that joint, the index finger was actually pointing off to the left, which not only looked weird but also contributed to the pain. So to fix it, the surgeon basically removed what was left of the joint, put in a metal plate, and fused the two bones together – along with straightening the finger and giving it a slight downward bend. I started off for two weeks a sling and hand cast; then I moved to just a finger brace which I’ve been wearing since then. Although it’s healing up well, it’s affected my typing ability – hence it takes me about 4x longer just to write up a new blog post! (using the right hand single finger ‘hunt-and-peck method’) And if I should bang it right on the top of the finger where that steel plate is… well, let me tell you, it hurts for a good 10 minutes! But I have one more appointment left, and I’m hoping that after the X-Ray is taken, they’ll tell me I’m good to go!

4. And finally… I mentioned above about my typing now and how long it takes me to write anything… Well, I got myself a headset (Logitech H390) and have been attempting to learn the Windows 11 Voice Recognition and Speech-to-Text software, in the hope I can speed things up and reduce typing errors (these days, I usually end up mis-typing every other word!) I wanted to wait till I learned that before I put out my next blog entry in the hopes of speeding up my typing. Now, being a ‘Tech Head’, I figured, “This shouldn’t be too hard!” Yeah, right… First of all, trying to find a headset that WORKED for this technology without breaking the bank wasn’t easy – even gaming headsets didn’t work for this type of thing. And once I did find one that works… All I can say is that it is a WHOLE lot easier typing a thought than it is to try to figure out what you want to say ahead of time! But I’m working on it, and hopefully once I get it all figured out, it will help me to write better and produce my posts more regularly.