Personal Stories
From the Elephant to the Mountain
08/29/2011
I walked out of the doctor’s office after a 7 minute exam with “you have Parkinson’s Disease, here’s some meds, brochure, call me with questions and we’ll see you in 6 months” still ringing in my ears. We call him, Dr. #1. Stunned and not quite understanding the big picture yet, nor its implications, I cratered.
It all began when I noticed that my fine motor skills, brushing my teeth, shaving, rolling up a blue print were not working very well. My right hand pinky had a discernible tremor and my wife had noticed an expressionless pawl on my usually smiling Irish face. After going to a motion disorder neurologist (Dr. #2) for confirmation we started researching everything that we could find about PD. Within a matter of days, my wife, Martha had a 3 ft pile of articles on each corner of my desk. One of Martha’s incredible qualities is her tenacious capability of attacking a situation head on, weed through it all and produce results.
