Visual Embroidery

Unlike Jimmy Stewart, I do not see any 6-foot white rabbits. (From the movie “Harvey” (1950)

Spiders! My house is full of spiders!

Fortunately, they all disappear when I approach.

What’s going on here?

Visual hallucinations. Turns out visual (and auditory) hallucinations are fairly common for Parkis: 20-30 % of Parkis, according to one source. I have softened this scary label to “visual embroidery” which is not only less scary but also more accurate (at least for me).

I’ll describe what this “embroidery” looks like in a moment, but first, let me assure my readers that this does not impact my driving in any way. I do not see 6-foot white rabbits or construct mythical children running across the street. My attention is focused on my driving.

I also know that my hallucinations are harmless and I can dismiss them easily. Can I stop them altogether? Not without a lot of work, and why would I want to? As one Parki said to me, ‘Hallucinations? That’s the fun part!”

So here are some embroidery descriptions:

–Spiders. We seem to have a number of little black pieces on the carpets, probably due to my husband’s predilection for black socks. I look at the black spot and it immediately sprouts legs and starts moving. The moving is so realistic that I frequently have to touch it to assure myself that it is just an inert piece.of lint. Complicating things is the fact that there actually are tiny spiders in this house.

–Fashion Design: I see someone (live or video). and their humdrum pants turn into a canvas for embroidery — rosettes or stripes (or both!) down the side of their pants. Doesn’t last very long.

–Dirty shadows — My husband came home from a hike and I was horrified to see a massive amount of dirt on his face. Then he turned his face and poof! the dirt vanished — it was the shadow in his laugh lines. Same thing with a bed sheet — it looked like the sheet was full of dirty smudges. Then I pulled the sheet tight and once again, poof! the smudges vanished.

–Reminder to clean up bathrooms: — This is kind of a variant from the dirty shadows category. Difference is instead of smudges I see a band of black scum dots that look like mildew. It’s not so easy to get rid of the phony scum. You can’t really move a toilet to get a better light that takes away the shadows.,

–Editing — Especially late at night as my eyes are getting tired, I start seeing editing on what I’m reading — Cross outs, words in red, that sort of thing.

NEWS FLASH

I have been scheduled for DBS surgery on October 21 – Yay!