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>  It's a big ol crazy world  <  John Prine, chicago folksinger
 
Very interesting and thought out view points by all the posters.  Janet Reno,
as expressed by many of you, is both a person private and a persona public
and there is much difference to be recognized between the two.  Not
everything honestly medical and scientific will probably be divulged during a
Washinton DC press conference announcement.
 
I was not around in WWII, only a parkie twinkle in my daddy's eye, but in
looking back at some of the pictures and articles about FDR and trying to get
an honest picture of FDR's health at the time,  I think we can safely say
that, whether for political or national security or whatever whimsical reason
you would like to put forth, the entire information dissemination machine in
this country does as it pleases regarding the truth.
 
So, is it little wonder that Parkinsons disease is portrayed by a reporter as
"an inconvenience".  Likewise is it at all incredulous that the woman who is
Atty General is feeling pretty healthy herself after having the general
malaise and strange numbness in her right hand (all made up by me for
example's sake, I do not know Ms. Reno's specific problems) diagnosed as
Parkinsons only 3 weeks earlier?  At that stage, no one minds if the
signature on your checks is a little smaller than usual, why hell come ooooon
in!.
 
The day I was diagnosed with Parkinsons I rode my 12 speed Schwinn back to
the office with a urine specimin bag hanging over the handlebars much to the
amusement of the neurologist's nurse.  I felt like I had been given a death's
sentence (I was always a fast and morbid reader and by then I had eaten alive
every book I could find in the public library including one barely translated
from German which was so full of sturm and drang that the neuro took me aside
and told me to cut that crap out).  I was on the way out and well aware of it
and people were still laffing at my jokes.  I reflected on how Woody Allen
would feel in similar circumstances ....
 
At any rate, I have no doubt that Janet Reno is also a fast and morbid reader
and has a pretty good idea of what is facing her.  But that does not mean she
is going to announce that to those assembled at a press conference.  Nor is
it any reason why she can't be as optimistic as she pleases to be about her
odds in the future.  Perhaps she will find herself  on the slowest of paths
of decline into the disease.  Perhaps and godspeed.  I wish you shelter from
the storm, a cozy fire to keep you warm, but most of all when snowflakes
fall, I wish you a slow declination.
 
I am currently at odds with a boss who reads the sidebars in Newsweek and
other such Med-News.  He is a quick fix man.  Got a problem?  Kerbang! Got an
answer. Shoot from the hip management style.  Don, got a problem with this
Parkie thang?  Kerbang, go find a good man with a 1/4 inch chuck drill and
get your brane bored out.   We used to do it to V8 engines in high school
shop class.  Bore out a 327 Chevy and it'll run like hell.  Don, you need a
brane overhaul.
 
Not so fast, Chuckie.  Not with this one and only one brane I was issued this
time around the karma wheel.  I have read with interest the postings and the
success stories of those of you that have had such operations and again,
godspeed and god bless.  Some day I may be faced with that myself and after
much personal troubled thought and analysis I would probably opt for the best
course  of action for myself at that time..  But that is all in due time and
in due season.
 
I think, in regards to Janet Reno and the opinions offered by some of you as
having her as a spokesperson, that the true measure of the personal success
of Parkinsonians and the tragedy of the slow but inexorable dismemberment of
 our lives by the disease called Parkinsons is best measured by some sort of
diorama that is expressed as a function of time.  Thus we have to the left of
our exhibit, a nationally prominent and exceedingly bright and capable woman
now functioning as the Atty General of our nation.  Then, to the far right,
we have the frail image of another once nationally prominent and exceeding
bright and capable man who once functioned as a powerful and persuasive
champion of people's causes as a member of our Congress.  That puts the
disease in a kind of time capsule that perhaps people can better understand.
 It shows the tragedy of the disease, the slow but inexorable taking away,
the cruel process of subtraction that I regard as the dysfunction of our
disease.
 
I once saw a photo sequence of a man and his daughter in Life magazine,
portrayed as only Life could do.  The man and his daughter had their pictures
taken at the Jersey shore each summer (on the daughter's birthday I believe)
from when she was quite a little girl until when the father could no longer
go to the beach.  Viewing that exhibit says a great deal to me about the
stages of life and the intersection of us in each other's lives. Also, since
Parkinsons is to me but another dysfunctional view of the same picture, if we
could get those not familiar with Parkinsons to see that this same sequence,
reviewed in a much faster sequence, essentially defines some of the agony and
loss associated with our disease.perhaps they would have a greater
understanding of our dilemma.
 
but, that's just the opinion of another rat.  regards,
RAT