So the National Parkinson’s Foundation sent me an email asking me to tell my PD story.  I’m not special, they want all their members to do this.  It did get me thinking though.  First, not all that many PD patients are third generation patients.  Second, the percentage of PD patients my age is tiny, most people are diagnosed in their 60’s and 70’s, even early onset patients are mostly in their 40’s and early 50’s.  Third, I  my mother lives with me and my husband so in some capacity, I am both a patient and a caregiver.  Poor Chris, he is constantly on call for anything mom and me can’t do, open jars, put up curtains or pictures, move furniture…

I don’t know if I even have a story.  Not one that every other PD patient hasn’t heard before.  My hand shakes and drops things, I feel like my right leg is being controlled by someone else sometimes and all I do is fight with it, some days I feel like I take medication all day long, sometimes my medication doesn’t work very much at all.

If I had a story about having PD it would be more about tripping over cats, and careening through a hotel lobby like a mad woman the first time I experienced propelling, or laughing over my mom falling out the back door only because she wasn’t hurt because she fell on her dinner she had just bought (mashed potatoes everywhere).  We stay pretty positive, no drama, no period of disbelief, no self-pity.  We just are who we are at my house.