When does my
medication work,
and when does it fade?
Record how your Parkinson's medication response changes through the day, as a single curve.
- Response through the day
- Time a dose was taken
From recording to understanding, in three steps
-
You record
How well you are moving right now, and when you took a dose, noted as they happen.
-
A curve appears
Scattered notes gather into one line running across the day.
-
A pattern becomes readable
After a few days, the shapes that repeat and the days that broke from them stand out.
What a single dose looks like as it passes
Note the time you took a dose and the times your body changed, and a day is left in this shape.
- Response through the day
- Time a dose was taken
- 07:00 Dose taken Noted at the moment, not from memory
- 08:10 Starts to rise When the body first felt different
- 09:00 Best moment The stretch you moved best that day
- 11:20 Coming down When things began to feel heavy again
Recorded only as a good day or a bad one, those four times disappear. Kept, they let you compare what was different the next time.
What a day leaves behind without it
Once a day is over, what tends to remain is roughly that it went all right. What time the dose was taken, when the body began to change, and how long it held all blur within a few days.
This diary puts those three on one shared timeline. How well you are moving, when you took a dose, and what happened in between, recorded together, make a day into a single curve. Once curves accumulate, one-off events start to separate from the shapes that repeat.
You do not have to sort your state into one of two boxes. Noting how things are right now is enough.
Starting with the words used most
What the words exchanged in the clinic actually point at on a graph.
- ON The stretch when the medication feels like it is working A common shorthand for the stretch of time when the body moves comparatively well.
- OFF The stretch when the medication feels weak A shorthand for the stretch of time when movement feels heavy and the body does not follow.
- Delayed ON When the rise starts late The point at which the response begins to rise after a dose is pushed later than usual.
- Incomplete ON When the rise does not reach as high It does rise, but not as high as usual, and it stays at that lower level.
- Wearing-off When the good stretch gets shorter What rose once no longer holds as long as it used to, and comes down before the next dose is due.
- Dyskinesia Movement you did not intend The word used for the body moving or swaying without you meaning it to.
Two background courses, taught through the body
Pharmacology
Pharmacology Through My Own Body
A doctor-patient relearns pharmacology — not as plasma graphs in a textbook, but as the daily curve a person with Parkinson's disease feels in the body.
See the pharmacology course →
Neuroanatomy
Neuroanatomy Through the Body
Why does the body stop, and move again? Starting from lived experience — freezing, stairs, visual lines — and following the motor circuits.
See the neuroanatomy course →
The site is written in Korean first
These English pages cover the words used for medication fluctuation and how to get started. The Korean site goes further — how to read each shape of curve, how to use the app step by step, and longer reading on what shifts a curve from day to day.