2015/4
I grew up on a dairy farm and have always loved the open air and practical hands on activity. Hence the living on a farm at the time of disease onset that I talked about earlier.
It also explains why we stepped down from the farm to a large block of land and large home in need of renovation as the symptoms worsened. The need to do things continued in spite of the PD.
When I was unable to do anything requiring even mild physical effort I looked for a practical outlet that might be both demanding and creative within my limitations. I had never done what might be termed artistic, fine work before; previous activities on the farm and renovating homes etc, had been heavier as befitting my then capabilities and interests.
I settled on scroll saw work with timber, being taken initially by a form of woodwork called Intarsia. This involved using the colour and grain characteristics of different timbers to produce representations of things like animals, birds and landscapes. In the pre-diagnosis stage I was able to produce a few items at a standard that kept my interest. A fair representation of a duck made me aware that this could be demanding and artistically rewarding.
By diagnosis I was able to do ten minutes (sitting down) of this work a couple of times a day. This small achievement left me physically and mentally exhausted, but also inspired me to do my best to stick with it into the future.
Post diagnosis I maintained my efforts to do more and better scroll saw work.
I recognised that working with the sometimes very small pieces of timber required for the Intarsia work was becoming very difficult as the fine motor skills deteriorated further – in spite of my terrific response to medication. I decided to start making Chess Sets. While this was still very demanding, I was able to make up jigs for the scroll sawing work to hold the generally larger pieces of timber involved. The finishing of the cut pieces was the most difficult given the finger problems.
I worked very hard at this hobby, finding it very demanding but also very rewarding. People were amazed that a Parky was able to do the work but more importantly for me, to do it at a high level. The sets are now in demand as rather expensive works of art.
The work involved incredibly intense concentration over long periods. The more complex designs for the chess pieces required around 300 hours of demanding focussed work to complete a full set. I built up to being able to do two hours of this a day by two and a half years ago. This increased to four to five hours most days over a few months.
How I beat my Parkinson's Disease 