When will I ever learn?

For followers of this blog (there are none except my son, Sam) who may have noticed, I have not posted an entry for almost a week now. I have been at a sales conference in Arizona, attending meetings all day while keeping up with my regular email. It is exhausting for the young and hearty but for someone like me it is doubly so, and add to that a new head cold complete with stuffy sinuses, sore throat and a drippy nose and a recipe for misery is born. I gave myself permission to miss a few meetings and I went to bed early each night while my colleagues partied most of the night away. Still, I feel awful. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been all negative. The hotel resort is gorgeous, the weather is lovely, the food stupendous and I had an opportunity to visit with my parents who live close by. The bottom line is I cannot do what I might have been able to do without PD, and although I know this I still try to push my limits. And, to make it worse, I have another trip back to back with this one; those plans were made first before I found out about the sales conference. I should have cancelled one or the other but I thought I could handle both, as long as I rested as much as possible on this trip. That would have been a good plan but I didn't anticipate that I would get sick and I didn't build into my plan the fact that something might go wrong. I just cannot stress my body or stretch my limits as much as I might have previously. Part of that is certainly the normal aging process but there is much more than aging going on, and it is related to PD and its symptoms. For example, the other night I went to dinner and forgot to take my evening pill with me and the walk back to my room was long so I decided to wait until after dinner. So, by the time I was finished eating and on my way back to my room I was very slow and stiff and having a very hard time. To make matters worse I got to my room and realized i had left my key inside. The lobby was a long way away and i did not have my cell phone with me either. The thought of walking back for the key and then walking back to my room again was unbearable. I sat on the floor outside my room and cried. Then I remembered that there was a house phone down the hall so I limped over to it and called the front desk. I didn't even have to ask, they offered to send someone to meet me at my room with the key. Crisis averted but not without emotional and physical cost. So the question is will I ever learn? We shall see.