Today, May 5th, 2021 marks 4 years since I sat in the Neurologist’s office and heard those words, “Well, I think I can say that you have Parkinson’s Disease.”

Looking back, I have never felt as terrible as I did prior to that day!

Before my diagnosis, I was having unbearable shoulder pain, crazy rigidity/stiffness, urinary incontinence (which meant carefully timed planning for proximity to washrooms), a tremor that I was unsuccessfully trying to control and conceal, my handwriting was illegible, my words were soft, slurred, and often unretrievable, I choked regularly on food/liquid, and I was working under extremely stressful conditions as a VP at a high-needs school.

But although this disease continues to progress while presenting new and unwelcome challenges, I actually feel better now than I did then.

Medication has eased the tremor, improved handwriting, and reduced urinary urgency.

Physiotherapy and Osteopathy treatments help with my shoulder and other PD-related pain.

A Naturopath has prescribed supplements to reduce inflammation.

Speech Therapy and a Swallowing Assessment have offered strategies that help reduce choking and improve vocal volume.

Daily exercise and dietary changes improve everything!

And leaving my job, although a difficult event to accept, removed the stress that was making all of my symptoms worse and provided me with much-needed time to practice self-care.

So finally receiving a PD diagnosis, that explained the reason for all of these symptoms, provided a weird kind of relief and an opportunity to focus on a path forward.

Don’t get me wrong, Parkinson’s sucks (for lack of a better term). There are some really tough days (and nights) and I know that things will continue to become more difficult over time – PD is famous for this – but for today I will mark the anniversary by acknowledging all that I have learned about my brain and the efforts that I have undertaken to slow this train down.

“Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice” Martin H. Fischer