Retiring on your own terms
Leigh didn’t want to spend his retirement sitting in an armchair, so he hasn’t let his Parkinson’s diagnosis disrupt his plans.
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Christmas is meant to be a time of joy and festivity, even more so when it’s the first after you’ve hit retirement age but for Leigh, Christmas Eve 2013 wasn’t the day he had hoped for.
After several months of worsening symptoms and concerns that a previous diagnosis of essential tremors was incorrect, 24 December 2013 was the day Leigh was told he had Parkinson’s.
His diagnosis wasn’t unexpected, he had begun to do his own research and felt his symptoms aligned with those of Parkinson’s, but that didn’t make hearing it any easier.
“It takes a little while to come to terms, and that wasn’t a good time of year to be doing that,” Leigh said.
“So maybe it took me a little bit longer than most people would but I eventually got to the stage where I was able to confront it.
“I thought, it’s a diagnosis, it’s not a sentence.”
Now, 13 years later, Leigh is proud to reflect on his journey so far.
He’s continued to do the things that bring him joy and has learnt to have patience and trust in his body.
Leigh’s diagnosis wasn’t quite how he’d planned to begin his retirement but after a career as a printer, it was time to leave the factory. With plenty of free time, Leigh wanted to continue working with his hands as an artisan.
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Alongside his wife Linda there was one thing they knew they weren’t doing in retirement - sitting in a corner with a cardigan around their shoulders.
Once an artisan, always an artisan
There aren’t many things Leigh can’t do. He has always been a talented woodworker, metalworker, and painter. Combining his skills across various works of art has allowed Leigh to continue creating even when his Parkinson’s symptoms are more pronounced.
Leigh said it took a lot of conscious and consistent effort to get to the point where he could freely work on whatever he feels like. It wasn’t always an easy journey though and reflecting on the past can be difficult.
“I couldn’t use a screwdriver,” Leigh said.
“It seems stupid to think that somebody would get upset about something simple like using a screwdriver, but I kept at it and eventually I got to the stage where I could use a screwdriver again.
“As well as not being able to use a screwdriver, I could barely hang a towel over a towel rail, now I barely think anything of it. It’s taken quite a while to come to that stage, months, but if you keep doing it, you get there.”
Working with his body and not against it, Leigh has also taken up new skills since his diagnosis.
In times when his symptoms are more pronounced, working with wood could be difficult, so he began working with leather.
More stable and with consistent movements, working the new material helped him open the door to return to some of his former works.
“You’ve got markers so you can mark the leather and run the punch down the little groove so the stitches stay straight, so that was a good choice and one of the first things I realised I could do,” Leigh said.
“Then I started to do more woodwork after that, and I found that was a lot easier because I had already done woodwork before and I had a memory bank to draw on.
“I think once your mind realises you can still draw on that memory bank, things become easier. They did for me anyway.”
Keeping true to himself and his lifestyle
Once diagnosed, Leigh took a while to process what having Parkinson’s would mean for him. It undoubtedly changed his expectations for his retirement, but once he was able to accept that he had the condition, he said life has continued well.
Leigh has always preferred quiet company, so he wasn’t keen on forcing himself to attend group sessions or events that he knew weren’t his style. Instead, he continued to engage socially in things he enjoyed, such as at the local men’s shed and in the workshop in the retirement village, he and his wife live in.
It was through these connections he met a painter, who asked Leigh to be the model for a local art show in which the portrait of him won first prize.
“I don’t think big groups suit me, they might suit some people,” Leigh said.
“You figure out a way to get what you want to do done, that’s what it comes down to.”
Persistence throughout diagnosis
Leigh’s Parkinson’s was initially misdiagnosed as essential tremors, but when medication was having little impact on his symptoms, with the support of his GP he was referred to his neurologist.
He said it’s very important to have the confidence to find and build a health team and health program that suits individual needs. Parkinson’s was not in his life plans, but Leigh hasn’t let it take those plans away.
“You don’t sit in that corner. Definitely don’t sit in the corner,” he said.
“The worst thing you can possibly do is go and sit in a chair, sit in a corner and do nothing. You have to try.”