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Ah,Dennis, Just the fact that you can enjoy a new day on your patio sitting on a chair damp with dew, what a beautiful thought that has to be to so many, many people!! You are blest. May the new year grant you peace. Elizabeth [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Dennis Greene <[log in to unmask]> To: Multiple recipients of list PARKINSN <[log in to unmask]> Date: 25. prosince 1997 13:01 Subject: And so this is Christmas >I woke early this Christmas morning - earlier than I wanted to and >much earlier than I had intended. PD does that to PWP; I'm used to >it, but I don't like it. I moved through the cool darkness of the >house, enjoying the break from the relentless daylight heat of this >unusually hot start to a Western Australian summer. The only sounds >were the shuffling of my feet and the muffled clatter of a sixteen >year old fridge engine that refuses to malfunction enough to justify >replacing it. Sometimes I know how it feels. > >I looked under the tree. Nothing had been added during the short >night. If Santa had got this far south, I must have been listed with >the naughty boys. Once more there was no mysterious parcel marked >'To Dennis'. Another year gone, and still he hasn't brought the >cure. I'm used to this too, and I don't like it either. > >Outside the darkness begins to grey into day as I slowly make myself >coffee and toast. I can smell the coffee in memory. I move coffee >and toast and a large glass of orange juice to the table on the back >patio. It is still very early, to early to have even taken my first >meds, much less experience my first 'on' of the day, so I move the >items one by one. It takes time - but what else would I be doing. >The patio chair is cold and slightly damp, the table wet with dew, >and the brick paving is strewn with the jetsam of yesterday's >easterly off the desert - Jo would hate anyone to see it like this - >but at 5 AM I'm not about to worry. > >Watching as colour replaces that first grey light I alternately sip >coffee and orange juice, enjoying the contrast, and think about the >cure. It occurs to me that after nearly eleven years of PD, god >knows how many "wonder drugs'', dyskinesia, a pallidotomy and all, I >don't know what I mean by a cure. I don't really expect that the >cure will make me as new, and that it will be as if I never had PD. >OK - fine - but what then do I expect. Drugs that work with only >minor side effects, surgery that works for everyone and fixes >eveything. I just don't know. But I do know that whatever form it >takes its probably 10 or more years away. By then I'll be 58. I was >37 the last time PD was not a factor in my life. No cure can give me >back those 21 years; no cure will give me back the things my >children and I were unable to do; no cure will erase 21 years of >heartache from my wife's experience; no cure will reimburse me the >lost income from what should have been my most affluent years. NO >DAMN CURE IS WORTH PUTTING MY LIFE ON HOLD FOR. > >Sounds only a 10 year old can make on christmas morning are coming >from near the tree. I better get in there. Later today there will be >a huge meal to eat, friends to greet and rivers to stroll beside. >None of these things are concerned with the cure or even with PD in >general, nor did santa have to leave them under the tree - they are >here, they are now, they are mine. Cure or no cure - this year, >next year, sometime,never - I'm going to enjoy what I have. > > "Happiness comes not from having what we want - > > - but from wanting what we have." > >Dennis > > >************************************************* >Dennis Greene 48/10 >[log in to unmask] >http://members.networx.net.au/~dennisg/ >************************************************** >