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October 21, 2009

Riddle Me This

When the photo arrived in my inbox, I clicked on it and thought: The image is like a riddle. What is colorful and varied yet single-minded; laughing yet quite serious; shaking and quivering yet not afraid? The answer smiled back at me in the picture of my fellow graduates of the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation’s (PDF) Clinical Research Learning Institute. The men and women who came to immerse themselves in all that is PD came from all walks – literally and figuratively – each with our unique gait and each with our story. A dancer, a doctor, a physicist, a pharmacist, an architect, an artist . . . mothers, fathers, grandparents. We came from as far west as California and Washington, and east from Rhode Island and North Carolina. There were southerners from Alabama and Texas and northerners from Massachusetts and New York. Despite our varied backgrounds, we had one focus: […]
November 22, 2009

Nuts and Raisins

I need to cut nuts out of my diet. Cheese, too. Sadly, red wine as well. Ditto on the avocados, soy products, vinegar, dried fruit. If I included any of the above in meals or snacks, a monstrous migraine ensued. This recent phenomenon of light-sensitive, eyeball-searing pain was a tag-along side effect of one of my meds. I hadn’t expected such a severe reaction to what was considered beneficial to take. Emerging from a particularly nasty skull-exploding episode, I shuffled into the kitchen, slumped at the counter, hungry, drained, and wondering what I could possibly eat that wouldn’t, quite literally, go to my head. Crackers? No, there are nuts and soy it the ingredients list. PB&J? No, the protein in the peanut butter would battle with my meds, not to mention nut’s place on the anti-migraine list. I boiled a pot of white rice and daringly added a touch of […]