Dennis,
First I apologize for sending what must have been a baffling letter For
reasons of its own my e-mail turned itself off and sent my unfinished mail
into cyberspace. Here more or less is what you should have gotten.
>Dennis,
>You are absolutely right in your remark that it matters not how many PWP
>there are if the popular and congressional perceptions of PD are that it
> is a benign condition and therefore less worthy than the more well known
>and more "popular" ravagers of body and spirit: AIDS, ALS, MS, MD,
>etc,... We all know otherwise. PD is merciless and cuts a wide
>swath. We, our families, our friends, all are affected to some degree.
>
>I wrote the following a while ago. It seems worth repeating.
Continuing the discussion about pd and its effects: If people were
polled at random as to what they usually think about when not thinking
about anything in particular (when their brain [or mind] is simply
idling), you would probably get a variety of stunned looks, some sheepish
smiles, and many embarassed confessions . My guess would be that the top
ranking replies would be money, sex, what to cook for supper, worrying
about family members, worrying about the future, and money, and sex.
If the poll were taken only of those of us with a chronic disease the
answers would probably be much the same, but the distribution of these
answers might be quite different. Right up there with money and sex would
be a worry about the future, financially, physically and emotionally. What
will I become and who will take care of me?
Pd is a gift from the Giver-of-all-good- things, an unwelcome and
unpleasant gift to be sure, but a gift nonetheless. We pwp's are
privileged above others. We share our front row seats in the theater of
the future with those with muscular dystrophy, diabetes, Lou Gehrig's
disease, and other less well known conditions. Alzheimers patients are
excluded; they appear to lose conscious contact with reality.
We pwp have a condition which affords us a delicious conscious descent
into the realm of total physical incapacity. The mills of the Gods grind
exceeding slow but exceeding fine.
Pd gives a new dimension to the meaning of the word relentless.
Furthermore our pd does not affect our cognitive abilities. Pd is a
surgeon with a very sharp scapel operating on an unanesthized patient. We
are awake on the operating table and painfully conscious of every cut as
one-by-one the surgeon removes our ability to write, to walk, to sleep, to
sit still, to engage in the ordnary bits and pieces of life, and on and
on.
We are like Poe's protagonist victims, like Fortunato, we watch in
disbelief as brick after brick is cemented in place knowing that one day
we will be fully entombed.
One reason I think of my pd as a gift is that it relentlessly holds a
mirror in front of may face and forces me to look into it. It is the
mirror of self-awareness, the mirror of truth, the mirror that shows me as
I really am, not as I might like to think of or imagine myself to be.
Denial is for beginners and has no place here. The emotional skills
needed to live gracefully with pd are purchased at great price, the price
of self-knowledge. They must be relearned daily, and every day I am less
than perfect, and every day I stumble where once I went smoothly.
Acommodation without surrender is easy to say, but difficult to practice.
George Andes 64/15 February 1998
