November 23, 2017
It can be a tough go living with this ridiculous disease, no doubt about it. Yet, I can look back with gratitude. For when the going got tough, I got going. On vacation. With a bunch of guys. Andy Pre-Parkinson’s vacations with my husband routinely involved bicycles. We strapped on the panniers and rode circuits dotted with B&Bs, each a day’s distance apart. Whether rolling across England or New England, we’d wake to the aroma of bacon and coffee, load up, enjoy the scenery, fresh air and exercise before the next inn. It all added up to: Ride, rest and repeat. Alas, there was a down side: pets couldn’t come along. Oh, and one other: heavy rain. When the dark cloud of a Parkinson’s diagnosis tried to rain on my cycling getaways, Andy, thankfully, was quite flexible. Rather than touring the perimeter, we settled in and, […]
October 26, 2017
April 7, 2017
We lost one of our own this week. Wayne didn’t die from Parkinson’s. But he did soldier through living with Parkinson’s, which, to me, means he died a war hero. I didn’t know Wayne well, but I did know two aspects about him. One is that he battled it all and then some, having a variety of medical conditions. The other is that he had a sparkle in his look, as though behind the dusty blue of his eyes was an enormous filter that sifted through the muck for those shiny moments of fun and humor. That quality likely got him through the daily skirmishes with PD. There are ten million of us worldwide (according to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation) who make up the ground troops in combat with rigidity, dystonia, dizziness, dyskinesia, insomnia, meds that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. April is Parkinson’s Awareness month. So, in addition to […]
January 3, 2017
The flu isn’t particular. It didn’t skip me because of the Parkinson’s. Nope, an equal-opportunity virus, it has me lying on the couch coughing up a lung same as anyone else in its path. I could blame holiday travel strain. Or not. The past week in San Francisco presented a mix of utter delights (restaurants at every turn – Burmese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Californian) and unusually warm and sunny walks (across the Golden Gate Bridge and along Castro Street). Admittedly, there were upended schedules and unpredictable circumstances. But what traveler doesn’t face a few obstacles? The balancing act between being away from home and being on an adventure, I’ve learned, requires adaptations. To keep the scales tilting toward the joyful, for example, I factor in nap times and often pack my own blanket (my PD gets me tangled up in puffy duvets). Among a litany of modifications, the most helpful has […]