Apparently a symptom needs witnesses before it can qualify as real.
People see steady hands, a quiet leg and a body sitting reasonably still. Then the person says they feel shaking inside their chest, abdomen, arms or legs. The room performs a quick visual inspection and finds no evidence. Maybe it is caffeine. Maybe anxiety. Maybe imagination. The body has refused to put on a demonstration, so the person becomes the suspicious part of the story.
What may actually be happening is internal tremor—sometimes described as buzzing, humming, vibration or shaking that can be felt but not seen. Research has found that more than 30 percent of people with Parkinson’s report it, yet it remains poorly understood. It can occur with visible tremor or without it. The outside of the body may look calm while the person inside it feels anything but.
Not every internal vibration belongs to Parkinson’s. Similar sensations can have other neurological, medical or medication-related causes, and anxiety may accompany or intensify them. That is a reason for careful evaluation, not a shortcut to dismissal. A new, sudden or worsening symptom deserves medical attention instead of an amateur diagnosis delivered from across the table.
After 35 years with Parkinson’s, I have learned that the symptoms hardest to show often collect the most suspicion. If a tremor moves a hand, people believe the hand. If it moves only through the person’s private experience, they start cross-examining the person.
The body does not owe the room a demonstration before the person inside it is believed.
The cost is not theoretical. Internal tremor can be uncomfortable, distracting and exhausting. It can interfere with rest, concentration and any attempt to feel settled in your own skin. Then disbelief adds a second job: monitoring the sensation, translating it into acceptable language and gathering enough evidence to make somebody else stop explaining it away.
That extra burden teaches people to stay quiet. If every invisible symptom becomes an argument, eventually reporting it feels more tiring than enduring it. Clinicians lose information. Families mistake silence for improvement. The person gets better at concealing the symptom and worse at receiving help for it. Everybody congratulates the quiet room while the body keeps vibrating inside it.
What needs to change begins with listening before interpreting. Ask where the sensation occurs, when it starts, how long it lasts and whether it changes with medication timing, stress, sleep, movement or position. Ask about pain, fatigue, anxiety, visible tremor and other symptoms without using any one answer to cancel all the others.
A simple symptom log can help a clinician see patterns that a ten-minute appointment may miss. The Parkinson’s team can review medications, related symptoms and other possible causes, then decide what evaluation or treatment fits the individual. Do not change Parkinson’s medication on your own because an invisible sensation has become unbearable. Invisible does not mean simple.
The correct response is neither panic nor disbelief. It is curiosity with respect. Stillness tells you what the body looks like. It does not tell you what the body feels like.
TODAY’S DEFIANT TRUTH:
Some tremors never make it to the surface.
Still outside. Shaking inside. Believe the person before demanding the performance.
Live Defiantly. — Richie Pikunis