Dancing With Strangers Midway through the month of March, I plan to do something that scares me. I will step onstage as a member of a band that is playing for the bulk of the night at an Irish bar on St.…

Truth Written in Snow  There were my tracks, clear in the freshly fallen snow. But something was amiss. Instead of recording a healthy stride, with clean separations between the steps, they formed a pair of channels in the powder, mute testimony to…

Delay Penalty Few things come easily to those of us with Parkinson’s Disease. From the simple, tying your shoes, to the complex, rising from a chair, PD is there to make life more difficult. So anything that’s easier to do with PD, that doesn’t…

Losing a Step The moment it happened, I didn’t feel panic. No ominous music disturbed the calm of my afternoon walk, no menacing shadow fell across my path. No one whispered “run!’ urgently in my ear (Much good that would have done,…

Life Unfinished I used to tell myself that after 30 years of life, every extra year was gravy. A look at life lengths over the years backs me up. Life before civilization was “nasty, brutish and short” in the words of English…

Can you get used to Parkinson’s Disease? After 20 years with a Parkinson’s diagnosis, it seems like a reasonable question. Can you get used to Parkinson’s Disease? Does the passage of time soften the blows? Does memory of your prior self fade,…