Columns

If you’re anything like me, there’s something energizing about gardening and pulling weeds. About pruning back overgrowth and watering budding seedlings, even if, because of having Parkinson’s, you can do it only a fraction of the time you used to be able to keep at it. In those…

There are quite a few articles that talk about caregivers supporting a person with a chronic illness, and that caregiver is usually the spouse. But what is it like when both people in the relationship have a chronic disease? There is a lot less information out there about…

When I was in high school, I followed the written journey of a classmate who was diagnosed with leukemia. Miles Levin struggled to comprehend a senseless battle through the exploration of words. He wore the armor of someone who was too young to fight cancer when he wrote, “Dying is…

I have a bad habit of assuming things. You would think (an assumption) that I would have learned by now, but no.  Take today for example.  My husband and I were at the mall this afternoon people-watching in front of the coffee shop. I watched through…

When I think of a warrior, I think of Mel Gibson and the role he played in the movie “Braveheart.” Gibson played the main character, Sir William Wallace, a Scottish knight. He was a warrior for his homeland Scotland, fighting for freedom against the English.  Although…

My previous eight columns addressed the CHRONDI Creed, a plan anyone can put in place when seeking to live better with a chronic disease. The CHRONDI Creed is challenging to put in place as a way of life. It takes courage to face life honestly and to…

You’ve probably read articles with titles like, “10 Things Not to Say to a Person with Parkinson’s.” These typically include statements like, “But you don’t look sick,” or perhaps, “My Uncle Nero had that, and his arms fell off.” You’ve heard the possible and the far-fetched, the comments…

Jean Mellano, a fellow contributor at Parkinson’s News Today, recently wrote a column about how this disease keeps taking bits and pieces of us — our abilities, our control of self — and leaves less and less of us day by day. In a reply to a…

Identity, the “I” in CHRONDI Creed, refers to the process of finding a health-fostering identity in the face of a chronic disease that has stolen things we loved to do and caused the death of self. When everything I loved to do was taken from me,…

  I’ve rarely had the thought, “Why me?” Does this mean that I’ve signed my life over to Parkinson’s disease? Is it a sign that I’ve given up? Last week at my boxing class, I was punching a bag when I heard laughter coming from the…