Fitting Role Models - A Parkinson's Lesson

By Maureen Salamon

Perhaps it’s fitting that the first person I ever met with Parkinson’s disease was a man who was walking clear across the country.

His mission? To inform others about PD and its effects while simultaneously proving that it doesn’t have to keep you down.

He definitely did that for me. At the time I was a twenty-something newspaper reporter who had never encountered anyone with the disease. So meeting him was an instant, eye-popping education.

We arranged to meet in a public park, one of the publicity stops on his cross-country trek. He handed me a sheaf of materials on Parkinson’s—a really useful thing for me since the Internet didn’t yet exist and gathering information wasn’t quite so easy. The facts and figures would serve as background for my article.

But simply observing the man was the best way for me to understand my subject. His speech was somewhat robotic, as were his movements. Walking was clearly a struggle, and muscle spasms in his arms and legs caused him to jerk them around while he spoke.

What impressed me most, however, was the passion in his eyes. There was no question this man was going to fulfill his goal, no question he could do anything he set his mind to. I wrote a story I hoped would educate others about all the things I hadn’t known before that day—not only about Parkinson’s but also about surviving and thriving in the face of it.

Ironically, the experience ended up enlightening me as much as anyone. About eight years later, when my father-in-law was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, I didn’t view it as a massive calamity. I knew the disease’s disabling effects, and I knew that his life (and ours, to a lesser degree) would change.

But I also knew, because of that man in the park, that life would indeed go on. Fortunately, that’s the outlook my father-in-law adopted as well. He had already survived a grapefruit-sized cancerous tumor in his colon, which lent him a steely reserve when faced with a chronic neurological illness.

“I know the minute I give in, it would beat me,” he says, “and I’m not giving in.”