I was listening to the BBC World Service broadcast this weekend and heard a very interesting interview with John Harbaugh, coach of the Baltimore Ravens NFL football team. One of his guiding coaching philosophy’s came from the legendary University of Michigan coach Bo Shembechler who believed in “The Team.” Many of the Parkinson’s support organizations talk about the need for a team approach in battling Parkinson’s. For example, The National Parkinson’s Foundation (NPF) have designated Centers of Excellence and Care Centers that provide a team approach. In fact, that designation is what led to my visit to the University of Florida Movement Disorders Center in January. You can read about my visit here.

Now the Michael J Fox Foundation and AbbVie Inc have teamed up to form Partners in Parkinson’s which “… aims to fill in knowledge gaps, provide new educational tools and resources for the Parkinson’s community to help Parkinson’s patients and caregivers optimize care at every stage of the disease, now and in the future.” Their motto is ‘Discover the Benefit of Team’ and they have a great website which is chock full of good information including a section on “Building your Care Team” In addition to the website they are conducting informational events in cities across the country (we are signed up for the Atlanta event in September) and the site includes a search tool to find Movement Disorder Specialist (MDS) in your area.

Of course ‘My Team‘ includes my doctor, my neurologist, my physical therapist and the other medical personnel who are in charge of my medical care. But of even more importance, my team includes my wonderful wife/primary caregiver, family members, friends, the other PwP bloggers I read or follow on twitter, the members of the support groups I attend, and you, the readers of this blog. All of you provide me with needed support, both physical and mental, helping me deal with my Parkinson’s disease. You are all appreciated and I thank you for your support.

And for me and other People with Parkinson’s ‘Our Team‘ includes the many researchers who are out to find better methods of treating or curing Parkinson’s and the many organizations such as The Michael J Fox Foundation, the National Parkinson’s Foundation, the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, the Parkinson’s Action Network and others who provide us with up to date information, help to prioritize and fund the research, and advocate for our rights. All of the ‘Our Team’ members need and deserve our thanks and support.

As I mentioned in my last post, I continue use the Fox Trial Finder to look for clinical trials and I have been accepted in one that tracks my typing cadence to measure my fine motor skills. I suppose they are measuring that cadence right now 🙂 I will get the results at the end of the 90 day test period. I definitely notice problems with my fine motor skills so will be interested to see what they discover.

Last week was support group week and we attended both groups. The East TN group included a presentation on adaptive equipment available to deal with problems like putting on shoes, buttoning shirts, cooking, eating, etc. The local group presentation was from a Physical Therapist who is trained in the LSTV BIG program developed for Parkinson’s patients. The program is a four week, four days a week training program that aims to improve gait, trunk rotation and balance. I had read about the program but was not aware it was offered locally. Last weekend was also high school graduation weekend for our oldest grandson, Garrett , more on that exciting event in the next post.

West Coast Travels

Hello from San Diego! We have had a wonderful trip to the Southwest and West Coast. We spent the first couple of days in Tucson with Karen and Jerry, friends from Bay City, MI. Jerry was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at about the same time as I was so we spent some time comparing our different symptoms, medications, and such. As always, I found it interesting how each of us experience different PD symptoms, what a crazy disease.

We explored Tucson and the surrounding area for a couple of days before leaving for San Diego. Karen and Jerry were excellent hosts and we had a great time hiking in Sabino Canyon, walking around downtown Tucson and enjoying the happy hour at the Ritz Carlton at Dove Mountain where we could hear echos from a flutist playing Indian flutes across the canyon from the outside patio.

We left Tucson and drove to San Diego where Ryan, Sarah and Julian were in the process of moving out of their apartment and into their new residence a few blocks away. They had just started the move and we got to help with emptying boxes, putting away household items, etc. and still found time to attend a couple of Julian’s Lacrosse games, go to the beach for sunsets and nice walks, and visit with Sarah’s sister Allison and her husband Kevin and their new little baby, Jack, born two days before we got here. We have enjoyed several great meals, a trip to San Clemente, and a great lunch at the Stone Brewery World Bistro – Liberty Station in San Diego. It has been a great visit and we are glad to enjoy their company and to help them with the move.

I’ve been on the new increased medication dose for about a week and a half and have seen good improvement with my gait and balance. Also I haven’t had problems with fatigue despite the busy days. I have been keeping up with my research and saw an interesting article today about the benefits of acupuncture for balance and gait problems. It certainly sounds promising and worth looking into further. I applied for two clinical trials last week but didn’t meet all of the criteria for either one this time around. Lack of research participants is a big problem and I am registered with the Michael J Fox Trial Finder to get notifications of any new trials that I might qualify for so maybe next time. I urge all you PWPs out there to register, we need to support the research being done to defeat Parkinson’s.

We are off to Sierra Vista, AZ next for a few more days of visiting with friends before we return home. In the meantime, don’t forget it is still Parkinson’s Awareness Month. This video by Davis Phinney, former Professional and Olympic bike racer with Parkinson’s, is inspirational and worth watching. It is about 23 minutes long and was filmed at one of his Victory Summits that he holds around the country. You can view the video here . Until next time, remember It Is What It Is!

Will This Winter Ever End?

Hello from cold and snowy Eastern Tennessee, where we are forecast to set a new record low tonight, 28 degrees, which will do wonders for all the fruit trees and new plants just coming up after a nice warm typical April week. But we have a plan, we are leaving for Tucson tomorrow morning where it is forecast to be 90 degrees!

The East Tennessee Parkinson’s Unity walk was great, a nice turn out on a cool and windy Saturday morning, about 150 walkers. Several nice exhibits, a nice send off talk from a local Neurologist and away we went for a nice 1.5 mile walk around the park in Oak Ridge. Another great opportunity to meet and talk with other PWP’s.

I had an appointment with my Neurologist today and we have decided to increase the amount of my medication to see if we can improve my balance and fine motor skills. We discussed when to switch to the ‘gold standard’ drug, Levadopa. He felt that as long as I am getting effective response from my current drug with limited or no side effects, we should hold off, so that is the plan for now.

As you have noticed, I still haven’t posted a list of blogs I follow, but one I follow Parkinson’s Journey, by Sherri Woodbridge, has a list of blogs as part of her Parkinson’s Awareness Month posts and I was pleased to see mine listed. You can view her entire list here , and if you have time, I highly recommend reading her other posts for April, they have all been informative and I look forward to each daily post.

As I mentioned in the opening, we are off to Arizona to visit with friends and to San Diego to visit with my son and his family so my next post will be from the western side of the country. Until then, remember, It Is What It Is!

Tag: Travel

Happy Thanksgiving!
Just a quick post wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving from Seattle. I have much to be thankful for this year including:
- making a change to a Movement Disorder Specialist who recommended a medication change that resulted in a great reduction of my symptoms;
- and that improvement allowed me to increase my exercise time which also helped to reduce rigidity and increase my mobility;
- and the increased mobility gave us a chance to travel to visit family and friends across the country;
- and I got to fish almost every day I was home without having to sit down after 15 minutes to rest!
But most of all I am thankful for the support of my wonderful wife, my family, my friends and all of you who take the time to read my wandering posts. I hope I have provided information of value to PwP’s and others through this blog and the Tennessee Parkinson’s Resources site that we started this year.

Thank you all and Happy Thanksgiving!
November 26, 2015
Catching Up

We have had a busy late summer and fall and, unfortunately, I have not been a faithful blog poster. But now the holiday season is coming up, so I’m sure I can keep up with timely blog posts 🙂

To bring you up to date, in August, my brother in law Joe in Michigan failed the eye exam for his driver’s license renewal. It was determined that he had severe cataracts in both eyes and shouldn’t have been driving at all! So off we went to Michigan to get him back and forth to doctors appointments and two separate surgeries. During the break between the first eye surgery and the second, we made it out to Colorado to visit family and friends, a trip we originally had scheduled in August to coincide with grandson Charlie’s 16th birthday. We then went to Grand Rapids for the Rallying to the Challenge meeting (see my last post for details) before heading home.

In October, we journeyed to Asheville, NC and met up with the Marcia and Erwin whom we knew from Kripalu and her stepsister and husband, June and Phil. We had a great time touring the Biltmore House (America’s largest single family residence) and the River Art’s District and catching up since last March when we met up in Florida. Marcia and Erwin and another couple from Kripalu held an inaugural 5K race/walk in the Poconos in June and raised $26K for the Michael J Fox Foundation!

A week or so later we were off to San Diego to visit Ryan, Sarah and Julian. We got to see Julian play football, attended one of Sarah’s yoga classes, enjoyed several fine wines and meals and celebrated Ryan’s 40th birthday. The weather was perfect and we got in a lot of walking and caught some great sunsets over the ocean.

When we returned, I had my appointment with my Movement Disorder Specialist who was pleased with how things were going and recommended no changes to my medication regimen, in fact, he was willing to schedule the next appointment for a year away, but we decided we should continue the every 6 month’s cycle for now.

We made a short trip last weekend to Jackson, MS to watch grandson Garrett play soccer in his college league semi-final soccer tournament, held at Milsaps College. We were rained out the first night and the next day the team lost in the last 2 minutes of a well played game. It was our first (and last) time to see him play this year.

In our spare time, we have continued to build up the Tennessee Parkinson’s Disease Resources website which is now operational and we have printed cards with the website address which we are sending to support groups in Tennessee. Our hope is patients will take an extra card or two and give it to both their primary care Doctor and their neurologist so they are aware that the site exists. If it all works as we would like, the Doctor can order additional cards to have on hand for patients. The goal is to let newly diagnosed PwP know they are not alone and resources are available.

So that more or less brings us up to date and I promise I will try to meet my goal of at least two posts a month, even with the holiday’s coming up. In the meantime, don’t forget to sign up for Fox Trial Finder and Fox Insight, we have over 50,000 profiles in Trial Finder and over 3000 in Insight but we need more!! Click on the button at the top of the page or the Fox Insight icon to sign up. Thanks!

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

November 15, 2015
The Busy Month of May

Here it is almost the end of May all ready! We have been busy with two trips to Memphis, one for a concert and one for our oldest granddaughter’s graduation from Rhodes College. So thought I would post a quick update from….THE BEACH! Yep we are at the beach on Bald Head Island for the week.

First the concert, little did we know but there are Internet stars who are famous for videos they post on Vine and YouTube and they draw quite the crowd of young girls when they tour. Somehow we agreed to take granddaughter McKenna and her friend to Memphis to catch the show. This involved a 5.5 hour drive listening to the music from the various performers (actually not too bad, as Mara said, “I could understand the lyrics”), then standing in line for several days (OK maybe two hours) because the girls had VIP tickets that included a meet and greet with the stars 2 hours before the show started. And that is how Mara ended up in this great photo with TEZ, one of the stars. The girls reported the concert was great, we elected to sit on the patio at the venue with several other parents, grand parents or guardians, skipping the screaming and pushing and shoving.

The following week, we returned to Memphis for granddaughter Breanna’s graduation from Rhodes College. It seems like it was just yesterday when we made our first trip to Memphis to take her to a summer soccer camp before her freshman year and now she has graduated Cuma Laud with a degree in Biology and plans to attend medical school.

It was a rainy morning but the graduation ceremony was wonderful and we enjoyed the weekend with the graduate and family and friends. (Yes that is me on the left wearing my Dad’s old straw hat and a bow tie! A Southern gentleman, all the way)

We have been working on ideas to make local information about PD such as a list of local support groups, links to national organizations, links to local programs like Big and Loud, etc. available to PD Patients and Care Partners via the medical community. In talking with PD patients, it is surprising how many of them mention they have had problems getting support group and local resource information even when they ask their doctor.

We want to create something simple, like a business card with a brief explanation and the website address that could be given to PD patients. We plan to try it out with East Tennessee information and expand statewide if it works. This is a collaborative effort with input from PD stakeholders including other PwP, representatives from national organizations and local groups, and the medical community. The site is a work in progress, so if you are a Tennessee reader of my blog or just interested in the idea, you can check it out here.

Another exciting event this month, the Cure Parkinson’s Trust in the UK released their annual report for 2015 and it includes a reprint of a portion of my blog post regarding the Grand Challenge meeting we attended last September. In addition to the reprint, the report contains a wealth of information about the Trust’s programs and the progress that has been made since that meeting and can be viewed here.

And now we are finishing the month with a week at the beach with family, which will give us a chance to up the exercise routine again, catch up on a lot of reading, and maybe I’ll even work on the class I started a month or so ago on how to build website! Which reminds me, I updated the National PD Resource page as part of the new website design, feel free to check it out and while you are waiting for my next post, don’t forget to sign up for Fox Trial Finder and the Fox Insight trial.

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

May 25, 2015