Our way out

This is not an original title by any means, or even idea, but yesterday on a forum I visit everyday I saw a thread about a woman who had suffered with Parkinson's for many years. It was to say the least very touching. I want it clear I never knew this woman, and I am repeating a story. A friend of mine whom I have only talked to on the forum told the story and it struck very deep.

Today I received a copy of the book it was written in. The book is called ,"The Peripatetic Pursuit of Parkinson's Disease". The woman after years of living with Parkinson's had developed a form of cancer. We don't get just one thing in life to deal with, the longer we are here the more there is. She discussed options with her Dr and came to a decision. Seems Drs don't generally take all the treatment they prescribe for their patience and she did what the Dr said he would have done, she opted for radiation to reduce the size of the tumour, cashed in her life insurance policy and decided to travel. Unfortunately she never was able to travel. The thing is when she developed cancer, it was her way out.

Now I have really paraphrased this story greatly, much more than it deserves and for that I apologize to everyone connected, but her story is only a starting point for this. After I saw the thread yesterday the book that I ordered came today, I was so happy to see it, Shelley, my wife said she has never heard me sound so excited opening a package. I found that story and had her read it. Afterwords with tears in our eyes we hugged, held on tight for a while, and softly almost inaudible she said,"are you scared?" The best I could do was kind of gurgle a yes, she said she was to we hugged and sobbed, composed ourselves and made dinner.

The thing with Parkinson's is there is no cure, I could be given a diagnosis of cancer tomorrow and have a chance, I could have a heart attack and get a bypass operation and be fine. With this there is no chance of either at this point. When the woman in the story found out she had cancer she knew her "way out." Most of us with Parkinson's will not die from it, it will be something else, pneumonia perhaps, but all the pills and all the exercise programs in the world will not stop the progression of this disease. It may help slow it a bit, but like all neurological diseases there is no stopping. Some live long and productive lives, some live a fast terrible decline.

So far as I can tell I seem to be one with a rather slow decline, my first symptoms started about 15  years or so ago hopefully it will stay that way, but her story did hit home. As our population grows there will be more and more of us with neurological diseases. It is thought that Parkinson's can be caused by exposure to certain chemicals ans solvents. The incidents of Parkinson's I's highest in the rust belt, if we let people like the Koch bros.have their way and do away with water protection and allow got the continued expansion of fracking, limit research, those of us with these types of diseases will continue to increase.

As long as profit over caution rules,as long as we continue to fight against the right of people to healthcare, and make the dumbing down of our children more important than knowledge we will continue to deteriorate. If we continue on the path of denying simple scientific fact each of us will be looking for our "own way out"