It's hard to remember a time when I was this bone-weary tired yet
maintained such a sense of peace & positive energy! It was only on Friday
that I said "farewell" to 4 friends...friends that I would not have
know a year and a half ago-one whom I had met face-to-face only a week
ago. Yet these 4 friends, I knew as well as if we were grade school chums
or high school confidantes. The 3 women had Parkinson's Disease like me &
the 4th was a caregiver/husband just like my sweet husband.
When they drove away, they left a hole in my heart & a
song in my soul, for we are the soldiers in a battle & comrades in a
passion. These 4 had joined another from OK, 2 others from NC, another
from PA and 2 more from Indiana to help me with my self-assigned mission:
to educate & to promote awareness of Parkinson's Disease in Central
Illinois-it has become my passion.
We were joined on Sunday, April 30th for my 2nd Annual
PD Awareness Day. by 300-350 people who came out to beautiful Shore Acres
Park, overlooking the Illinois River to listen to tales from a
storyteller, get up close & personal with a variety of critters (from
Great Horned Owls, hawks, raccoons, skunks , and various other of her
wildlife menagerie) brought out by a wildlife educator, see sleight of
hand by a wonderful magician and listen to the sweet sounds of jazz &
standards from a piano man before an classic rock n roll band took the
stage to play Beatles-era music!!
Besides all this free entertainment, folks were treated
to a wonderful buffet provided by local caters, brats & hot dogs grilled
my friend & fellow PWP Tom Kelly and the talents of a balloon man who made
marvelous creations from balloons! We raffled 2 afghans made bye PWP's,
passed out information and Awareness ribbons, and collected nearly $1,500
for The Parkinson Alliance. , , but the thing that stands out so clearly
in my mind is the people-those without computers and chatrooms to bind
them together-people who have Parkinson's & their caregivers who came from
all over central Illinois, from as far away as Chicago, who had heard of
this event & had felt that need that we all feel: to connect w/ others
like ourselves, to know that we are not alone in our battle with this
greatest leveler of all playing fields; this thing that brings out the
common ground in us all-PD. And they found loving community shared
experiences and made new friendships. It is this that gives me the
greatest joy!
When I think back almost 10 yrs. ago, when I was in the
hospital because my left arm was all tingly & wouldn't swing & my left
foot dragged when I walked (and a year at the chiro hadn't helped a bit),
I remember feeling very relieved upon learning that I didn't have MS or
any of those nasty diseases & although I had the symptoms of Parkinson's,
I was much too young for that!!! And so I continued on in blissful denial,
being the perfect wife & mother doing the things that perfectly happy
people do-having babies grow into toddlers, planning parties w/ my gang of
friends and assuming that I knew better than the doctors--until one day, I
could no longer laugh away the symptoms.
My husband took us to Mayo Clinic in MN. where I was
handed down my sentence: Parkinson's Disease. Still I had no idea of what
lay ahead so when we got home, I poured myself more deeply & vigorously
into my activities at the kids school & at church & in my social
circle-believing then that if I ignored it-this thing would go away. Of
course, then God stepped into my life and knocked me down as he did to St.
Paul (both of us, it seems, need something BIG to get our attention!!). My
symptoms become so severe so quickly that there were days when once I got
the kids off to school, I barely had energy to plan or prepare dinner.
This was all wrong, I told God in our daily
conversations that would sometimes turn into shouting sessions! I am a
"doer"-I "do" for other people; it's my thing-it makes me feel good about
myself and it is how I'm earning my way into Heaven (after a somewhat
extended adolescence of hedonistic behavior!). I was angry with God and
determined to do anything to get my life back. Ah, but destiny has a way
of molding our lives despite our best efforts to the contrary.
