Bruce’s Daily Routine

Bruce’s Daily Routine

These days I try to follow every step in my master routine list, as follows:

• Lumosity – This is a special website where you can play over 50 challenging mental games.  I play them for about 30 minutes each morning, after breakfast.  Click!

• Voice Training – To counter Parkinson’s soft voice, every day I do a series of voice exercises, where I speak aloud certain sounds, words and sentences, and get feedback from a software program that let’s me know the decibel levels of my verbal output.

• Swallow Training – For these I do a series of exercises that help me build up my throat muscles, all to to counter the scary choking problem I have that could lead to aspiration pneumonia.  Here are the directions for the first of these drillls:  Hold your tongue tip between your front teeth and swallow your saliva without releasing the tongue position. 

• Breathing Exercise – For these exercises, I use a device called “The Breather.”  Click!

• Meditation – Transcendental meditation every day, just like the strapping young man in the photo above (except I usually wear a shirt in the winter). Click!

• Book Reading – Right now my reading club is working our way through a collection of short stories from You’ve Got to Read This.  Click!

• Back Exercises + Push-ups – To counter my recurring lower back problem.

• Gym, Walking outdoors – When the weather is not bitter cold, I go for walks outdoors.  Otherwise, it’s time to hit the gym.

• Health Diary – Every day I record how many meds I take and when, whether or not I have a coughing fit, and other info I’ll discuss with my doctors.

• Blood Pressure – I record my blood pressure each day, once while sitting, then once while standing.

• Neck Stretch – I rotate my head from side to side to counter the stiffness I sense, ever since my DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) surgery.

• Vitamin/Supplement – I swallow about 10 pills daily – Vitamin D, Cod Liver Oil, Ginkgo Biloba, etc.

• Leg Strength Exercise – I’m back to riding 30 minutes on my spin bike, but not superfast, as I’ve got arthritis in my knee.

• Paperwork on Desk – Have you done your taxes yet?

• Piano – After a 35 year absence from playing piano, I resumed playing a few weeks ago.  I need to practice much more, but here’s an error-ridden sample from Bach:

• Origami –  Like my piano playing, I need much more practice with origami.  This is a rough version of a cicada.