This post originally appeared on the Parkinson’s Community LA Blog in the fall of 2019. In honor of James Parkinson’s birthday (April 11, 1755) I am reposting it here. My left-hand dances to a beat all its own. It doesn’t need a partner or even music. The digits just flutter. Constantly. Faster when I’m cold,…
On November 5, 2015 – the anniversary of Guy Fawkes and his Catholic crew’s attempt to blow up the British Parliament in 1605 – my world was blown up with a diagnosis. “Could it be anything else?” I asked the head of UCLA’s Movement Disorder Clinic “No, it’s Parkinson’s Disease,” he replied. There was never denial…
On a crisp November morning, an esteemed neurologist confirms what I already know. “It’s Parkinson’s Disease.” “Could it be anything else?” “No. You have PD. But I have patients who are in their eighties and nineties – and I know that you’ll be one of those too.” Learning that one has a neurodegenerative disease is…
I am losing my mind. Am I’m losing it to my Parkinson’s Disease? To age? To maladies yet to be diagnosed? I stare into space, trying desperately to remember what was right there, right there, on the tip of my tongue just moments ago. Then it hits me: I have children. It’s not the Parkinson’s…
There is no challenge that duct tape can’t overcome in the right hands. My husband has such hands. There is a pesky, Parkie peculiarity pertaining to stairs. Specifically–walking down them. When I look down, I see the step as if I’m wearing reading glasses and looking at a distant object. The challenge is heightened when…
“Do you have delusions?” asked my husband while we were watching TV, reacting to the commercial that just aired. “No!” I said emphatically. Delusions of grandeur? Perhaps. But the people who are in my room are there in the flesh. And they’re usually asking for something. True, I do hallucinate occasionally that my children aren’t…
It’s been said that when those of us with Parkinson’s Disease receive our initial diagnosis most ask, ‘Why me?’ It never occurred to me to ask that question. I believe that I have PD because the Universe is random, but God’s grace is not. I believe that it might just as well be me twitching…
When I was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in late 2015, a couple of close friends envisioned my near future with dread. They had me losing my license …. or in a wheelchair, the dementia unit or my coffin. They were living in the fear of my brain’s future wreckage. I was somewhat shell shocked…
Throughout time, great physicists and soldiers put their heads together to create. In Wuppertal-Elberfeld Germany in 1938, in Los Alamos in 1945. They combined their superior intellect for its seemingly highest purpose— to create a stronger pesticide, to split the atom—all to improve our lives. Instead they gave us the threads to sew our own…
If “it” has a name, then you can deal with “it.” Fight “it.” If “it” has a name “it” is a quantifiable enemy that can be vanquished. Decades ago, on a crisp Fall day I walked out of an office with a name—a diagnosis. ADHD—the “it” that ailed my older stepson, the one I don’t…
I got the horse right here The name is Paul Revere One of my favorite numbers in Guys and Dolls is sung by a trio of gamblers. And here’s a guy that says if the weather’s clear Can do, can do, this guy says the horse can do If he says the horse can do,…
I had a vision for my life. Perfection of the sort seen on big screens and small greeting cards everywhere. I had a vision of my life – and then I lived it. The white picket fence with the blended family of four – two steps, two bios — all living happily together, memorialized in…
I have no sense of direction. Literally. I can get lost on a straight line, never mind a path with twists and turns. Understandable, I guess as I come from a people who were lost in the desert for 40 years. Frankly, if it weren’t for GPS I’d be late everywhere all of the time….
I’m a huge fan of Jim Carrey’s “Liar, Liar,” about a workaholic attorney who loses his ability to … well… massage the truth… and in so doing becomes a better person and father. I’m particularly fond of Carrey’s Claw routine when his arm is possessed by a loving ‘Tickle Monster’. My husband and I enjoyed…
I think about mortality as much as the next 51-year-old – maybe more so because I have a neuro-degenerative disease that may result in disability, dementia or death – but not now. I’m here and quite alright now. And now is the only gift that we are guaranteed so hope that you’ll join me and embrace it….