On October 14, 2018 I watched an interview of Catherine Laborde in a TV show named “Sept à Huit”. In this conversation, she spoke about her Parkinson’s disease and her Lewy body disease. She especially described her symptoms and their consequences in her everyday life.
She is a 67-year-old woman who was a weather presenter for TF1 from 1988 to 2017. She was diagnosed four years ago. In order to move away and to define this disease, she prefers to name it by a word beginning by the letter “P” but different as “Parkinson”.
Before the diagnosis, she didn’t realize that she was sick but it is her husband who did that. Indeed, he saw that her right arm was shaking. As he insisted, she made an appointment with the neurologist.
During this appointment, the doctor asked her to walk in his office on the floor slats without deviating and she had to write her name and a sentence. These are two exercises she has done without asking too many questions. After that, the neurologist developed a lot about what Parkinson’s disease was. So, she asked him if it meant she had this disease and he said that she had it. He added that Parkinson was small and that she didn’t need to worry. She also learned that in addition to Parkinson she had a Lewy body disease.
Following the diagnosis, she didn’t cry but she burst with joy because she could finally put words on some symptoms (e.g., her memory gaps or the fact to no longer be able to walk with high heels). She perceives Parkinson’s disease as an enemy.
In this interview, I also learned that she presented the weather for two years without anyone knowing she was sick. She said that as long as there was weather, there was the possibility of keeping Parkinson away.
In this TV show, Catherine Laborde described some symptoms such as tremors (she explained that she often takes her right hand with her left one to stop her tremors), memory problems (e.g., forgetting the word “cloud” or the title of her book or when she was sure that le bassin d’Arcachon was next to Paris), graphomotor disorders (i.e., she has difficulties to write with a pen) and sleep disorders (e.g., she takes naps while falling asleep brutally). Despite the fact that she was shaking, she always needed to move and she was taking naps, she wrote a book entitled “Trembler”.
Parkinson has different repercussions in her everyday life. Indeed, she can’t ride a bike anymore and she has a spatial disorientation and a balance disorder. She perceives it as a defeat.
At the end of the interview, she spoke about her caregivers, especially her husband. For her, caregivers have a more difficult position than her. She compares that to a cyclone (i.e., she is the center of the cyclone where nothing is happening and her caregivers are the most brutal winds). She used this metaphor to say that she always knows where she is in the illness but that her husband never knows it.
She conclude the interview by saying that it is a terrible disease.
Words I have learned :
– to move away = éloigner
– to define = cerner
– tremors = tremblements
– naps = siestes
– balance disorders = troubles de l’équilibre