The Unshakable Optimist - a Column by Mollie Lombardi

I know I say it all the time, but Parkinson’s disease is just weird. It can affect you in strange ways you never imagined, like when you’re out in a crowd. When I was diagnosed, the only Parkinson’s disease symptoms I knew of were the visible ones.

I was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease when I was just 36 years old. At that time, my life was moving quickly. By all accounts, I was headed toward the peak of my career and traveling most of the time, often internationally. I’d been married for just five years,…

I have long been fascinated by the idea of being “in flow.” Many of us have experienced a state of flow without realizing it, or even knowing what it is. Flow state was first identified and studied by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, one of the founders of positive psychology. So what…

While more than 10 million people are estimated to be living with Parkinson’s disease globally, many people still don’t know much about it. My grandfather was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in his 70s, yet I knew very little about its symptoms or treatments until I was also diagnosed with it.

I have a neurologist appointment coming up soon, which has me thinking about how lucky I am to be able to say that. I’m fortunate to have a great neurologist who treats me for Parkinson’s disease. I’m also fortunate that she is just one part of a medical…

One of the most disruptive aspects of a disease like Parkinson’s is the lack of predictability, which shows up in many ways. In the long term, there is the unpredictability of how quickly and in what ways the disease will progress. There is the shorter-term uncertainty of how…

October is a busy month in my household. We celebrate both my husband’s birthday and our wedding anniversary. It’s been 19 years this year, and I can say that we never imagined where we’d be now when we said “I do.” When you plan your wedding, you don’t always think…

When it comes to weird and unexpected symptoms, Parkinson’s disease is the gift that keeps on giving. My grandfather had Parkinson’s, yet when I was diagnosed with it, the only symptom I’d heard of before was tremors. As I eventually learned, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Parkinson’s disease is not only degenerative but incurable, which means it gets worse, to some degree, every day. While we still don’t have any proven disease-modifying treatments — those that will actually stop, reverse, and cure Parkinson’s — advances in technology have helped to control symptoms. And as I’ve…

Anniversaries can be good and bad, loving celebrations or reminders of past tragedies. For me, the anniversary of my diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease is a bit of both. It was awful and tragic and life-altering in some ways. But it’s also the day we named the monster that…