“Sorry Ben – I can’t make out what you are saying.”

The person who said this yesterday meant no harm. I even feel guilty using the quote at all. But it captures something important about what I’m going through. For that, I thank them.

I’ve learned that PSP is never the same beast. It shifts hour by hour, influenced heavily by stress. And right now, stress is everywhere.

PSP often feels like an analogy I’ve used before: an old iPhone that reads 100% battery one moment and then suddenly crashes to zero without warning. Unpredictable, unreliable, and quick to freeze under strain. This week, that analogy has felt painfully accurate.

War, sirens, uncertainty, and tension fill the air. There’s also due to the situation a massive personal challenge – a certain ceremony that is so dear to my heart, so central to my personal journey and those of many other loved ones, and so deeply important to one of my most loved ones especially – that I won’t go into deeply here. But it adds another layer to an already overloaded system. The noise alone, combined with sensory sensitivity, leaves me agitated. That agitation just intensifies the physical strain, like the sharp pain in my arm from pushing my manual wheelchair. (Though thankfully, a new support is helping a bit.) Meanwhile, all the usual support services – physio, for example – are cancelled for now.

I know it’s hard to hear me sometimes. My voice‑recognition software – my lifeline – often can’t tell whether I’m speaking or just making incoherent sounds. Other moments, I’m perfectly articulate. Yesterday, Wispr (the app I rely on) understood only about 65% of what I said. Not terrible, but a steep drop from just a few days ago (95%). Since I can’t type well at stressful times, I’m completely dependent on how well it hears me on any given day.

Because stress and PSP made typing hard, I sent a voice note to a professional we’re working with. I said something I fully understood while recording and sent it without hesitation. Her response:

“Sorry Ben – I can’t make out what you are saying.”

I didn’t believe her at first. So, I listened back. Again. And again. And the truth hit hard: I could hardly understand a single word – not at any speed of playback.

I don’t think this is a sudden worsening of PSP thankfully. It feels much more like stress and anxiety amplifying my symptoms. I’m not a neurologist or psychiatrist – just someone trying to make sense of what my body does under pressure.

I feel guilty even writing this because so many people are suffering in this conflict – many, far more than me. But writing is therapy for me, and it matters to understand how external stress shapes PSP. I know I’ve been difficult the last couple of days. I’m sorry. My intentions come from a place of integrity, but stress warps the delivery.

And it’s not just my voice. Here we get a one‑minute warning before rockets land – yesterday, shrapnel actually fell in our village. Because we need to move quickly, I tried using my electric wheelchair indoors again. But after freezing mid‑movement multiple times and in one incident painfully wedging my feet between the chair and the base of the recliner chair, I had to stop.

Listening back to that voice message was a harsh reminder of a bigger truth:

It’s not just my voice. It’s everything.

My Vanilla Index which I mentioned the other day is off the charts, and my watch confirms my stress score is high. Just like that old iPhone, I can feel the system draining faster than it can be recharged.

My deepest hope is that this war ends, that the bigger picture finds resolution, and that people everywhere are safe. This isn’t a political post. It’s about how global events hit individuals in deeply personal ways. Millions around the world are carrying extra stress right now – and mine just happens to collide with a terminal disease in a particularly brutal way but this is in no way special. I just happen to be one of the few that’s writing a blog about it.