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Recently I was approached about leading a team for the 3rd year, or is it the 4th year, for the 2005 Unity Walk in New York. Having proudly managed a great group of friends over the past few years as the team captain for Team Yopa (and coordinating the teams raising of over $100,000), I understand the hard work all of you put into this effort in the past. Unfortunately I have not been doing so well as of late. The last 6 months have brought many changes into my life. First and foremost I reluctantly resigned as the President of YOPA (but will always remain one of the orignal founders). Healthwise it has been a rough year. I am at the 5 year mark and have been on SINEMET since day one (take an excess of 1300mg a day, SINEMET 25/100 and 50/200 CR 4x daily, with COMTAN and AMANTADINE. My speech as many of you are aware has degraded rapidly. Although still strong most of the day it is reduced to a stuttering, low, mumble for an hour in the afternoon and for the whole night (6 to 10pm). Weight loss is taking its toll as well. Having lost 20pds in the last year it is now mostly loss of muscle weight. I still work full time as an IT Specialist for the Department of Energy, it is a struggle but I will not let PD beat me. And as many of you are aware I medically retired at 80% disabilty from the US Air Force in 2002 after 16 year of honorable duty in the Intelligence career field. Enough about my sob story, time to get down to business. I have set a lofty goal of 100k and 100 walkers. We can do this together, I know many of you and many of you know me. I have been there for many of you over the years and plan on being here for you for years to come. Know I need you. I need you to join this team of friends and family. Bring your spouse, parents, children, friends, and your dogs! Join us in raising crucial money for pD research but more importantly help us raise awareness. Keep a close eye on the old www.youngparkinsons.com website as fellow PWP Jim McCumber brings it back to life. We offer the best daily, non biased PD related news items and plan on bringing you a lot of new interactive functions over the next few months. We want to make this your site, you have a voice in it. If you would like to help please email us at [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] This is not an attempt to compete with any other organization or team, it is an effort to get friends back together and to have a great time in New York as we have done in the past. We will be coordinating a team dinner, giving free team tshirts and other free PD awareness items. We will also be providing discounted hotel and aifare. We hope to get the majority of the team in the same hotel. So, if you have walked with us in the past you know what a great time we have there. If you havent visit the message board at www.youngparkinsons.com and look at the photos from past walks. And I can guarantee that our own celebrity, a 41 year veteran of Parkinson's, Mr Russ Ahlstrom, will be there once again to lead our efforts! For more info on Russ email me to purchase his book: It's All In Your Head, Dealing & Living With Parkinson's. On a final note I would like to announce a new project I am working on, a documentary entitled "A Day In The Life Of A Young Onset Parkinsons Disease Patient", or "Parkinson's: Not Just For Grandma Anymore.". This film will show the daily struggles, leaving nothing out. From restless sleep, to getting up 5 times a night, showering, grooming, dressing, driving, trying to maintain a job, and much more. More importantly it will show the good side of PD as well (yes pD has a good side). THat is the people, the friends, the closeness of our community. It will also show that parkinson's can be tolerated and accepted, it does not have to be a life ender. We dont have to "wait for a cure", we can live life and have fun (although maybe a bit more shaky or rigid then before). It will be shown at the Santa Fe Film Festival in 2005 and hopefully be broadcast on PBS or public television across the nation. More on the film in the coming months. As you can see I am a bit pumped up. I am rested and ready to roll, are you ready to roll with me? Lets do it! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn