On the various PD forums I visit, I often find that the newly diagnosed are scared and can only see a bleak future for themselves. On the other hand, when I was diagnosed, my response when the neuro gave me the news was "Oh....hmm...what was that? My wife will want tI o know the details."
He looked over his glasses and repeated, "It is early stage parkinson's"
I think he must have thought me odd as I had no real reaction. I knew parkinson's was not good but somehow thought it wasn't all that bad.
I continue to remain upbeat in the face of a possibly devastating future. I just don't think it will be terrible. Perhaps I lack commonsense. Or, maybe I am in denial, but I don't think so. Only time will tell.
I know of one lady on a forum who has had the condition for 17 years and still leads a normal life. Seventeen years from now I will probably not have to worry about PD. Oddly, this lady and I are the same age (68) and our mothers died in the same year at the same age and we both kept our condition a secret from them so as not to ruin their last days.
But, I digress. I know PD is a designer disease and each victim is different. Some people get the condition at a very young age (eg. Michael J. Fox when he was 29 or 30). Others, are diagnosed at an appropriate age (me - 64). I want to tell the new PWP "It's not so bad" but that would only be my experience. Like I said - a designer disease. I got lucky. I think I would have had a different reaction to the neuro's diagnosis if I had early onset. I won't try to paint a rosy future because who knows how hard the disease will hit the newbies. I feel for those who were not so "lucky" as I was, but even for people who are newly diagnosed at whatever age, think positively. I believe that within my somewhat limited lifetime a drug or procedure will be discovered that severely slows the progression of PD or cures it altogether.
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