In December of 2004, two things occurred that let me know something was happening to my body that I did not want to happen, and I couldn’t stop it. The first was that I got very angry with someone and my hands and body began to shake. The second was my loss of strength, and for the only time in 21 years, I had to hire a helper because I couldn’t complete jobs on my own.
I immediately began planning to close up shop as it were, by June of 2005, sell my house, and enroll at a university to earn a bachelors degree. Up until then, I had only known one person with those symptoms, so Parkinson’s was simply the name of a physical ailment, attached to a few meager facts. My mind flashed back to the time in 1974 when my wife and I found out that Barbara, our neighbor, had Parkinson’s.
Each time we talked with her, she shared bit by bit about Parkinson’s, and what her symptoms were like. My wife and I helped her out as much as we could, in lots of different ways. We eventually helped her move, and on that one day, we saw how her symptoms manifested, and under what conditions. Those mental pictures stayed with me all these years.
I was not officially diagnosed until January 2006, but there was no doubt in my mind what was happening. As I physically moved on with my life, all I could see was loss. I loved hanging wall paper, and if my symptoms had abated, I would have instantly returned to my trade.
Each accommodation I had to request seemed to me to be cause to feel ‘less than’. Handicapped parking tag, taking tests in the Disability Support Services Center at VCU, needing a regular assigned note taker in each of my classes, qualifying for job search assistance from the Virginia Department of Rehabilitative Services; what I could no longer do for myself seemed to describe my new lot in life.