hi all

At 07:17 1999/11/07 -0600, paul wrote to me, in part:
>... Apparently you are not familiar with truly advanced
>cases of PD.  My father died of complications after 13
>years.  ...  My mother took care of him to the very end
>but you apparently do not have a clue what some
>caregivers go thru.  It takes a VERY special person to
>cope.  And, yes, it could destroy a family --- mentally.
>... Death was a blessing --- but what a hell of a way to
>die...

hi paul,

i appreciate your comments
your father and your family obviously had a difficult time
i was with my father as he struggled for two years with throat cancer in 1977
i was with my mother as she was overcome by heart problems in 1964

in my view
perception of any situation 'tragedy' or 'blessing'
is in the eye [and heart and soul] of the beholder i.e. the percept-or
and is tinted by the lenses the percept-or uses to look through

the old saw
about 'sauces and gooses and ganders and gravies'
hits the mark [even though i can't remember exactly how it goes]
in the same way that the 'glass being half full or half empty' classic does

>...On another subject that I have been wanting to write
>to you about ----- you comment about being afraid to
>have a surgery to relieve your PD.  You better get over
>it girl!!!!   My brother says there is very little pain
>involved with a biSTN...

pain holds no terror for me
it is other aspects of surgery that i fear, going back to childhood trauma

i know that i could do some work on overcoming that fear
maybe editing and posting the-hole-in-the-head-gang-stories
is part of that work [?!]

my views on tragedies and blessings and surgeries and illness
are created and coloured by me and my experiences
and by the way i choose to interpret them

the fact that i had a choice was not apparent to me most of my life
until i read m. scott peck's declaration 'life is difficult'
in 'the road less traveled'

that shift in perception
['the scales fell from my eyes']
was the catalyst for a significant change in my 'lens prescription'
going all the way back to april 1990
when i thought the bottom of my world had fallen out from under me
not because of my pd diagnosis 18 months earlier
but because of my discovery [piled on top of several other losses]
that my four month old [first] marriage had been a mistake and was over

we are
where we have been

janet

janet paterson
52 now / 41 dx / 37 onset
e-mail - [log in to unmask]
web-site -  http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/6263/