People who have Parkinson's disease—like me—have to recognize that sometimes our "heart" issues, such as depression, anxiety, and the like, are actually medical conditions that need treatment. But if those diagnoses are ruled out, we need to consider the possibility that the optimism or pessimism we feel is a decision we are willfully making. To say it another way, we choose whether we're going to give up or keep fighting, whether we're going to focus on the negative or look for the positive.
I faced that decision early on when one day while on my morning walk, and without warning, my toes started curling inward; in time my whole right foot did the same. I hobbled home and left a voice message for my neurologist, reporting what had happened. Later, he called and confirmed that I was dealing with yet another symptom of Parkinson's. I was devastated. I love my morning walks. They set the tone for the rest of my day. This was going to seriously cramp my style.
About a week later, it happened again. I was at least a half-mile from home. I almost called my wife, Cheryl, to come get me, but instead I decided that I was not going to let this new development take away my primary means of exercise. I started experimenting with ways to correct my gait. I first considered tying a belt or a rope to my foot and lifting it by hand for each step. The nearest belt or rope was at the house, however, so that wasn't going to work.
Then I looked down at the curb and had an ingenious idea. I started walking again, gingerly, except this time I let my left foot land in the road—which only worked because I live in a quiet suburban community with very little traffic—while I let my right foot come down on the curb itself. With each step, I caught the top of the curb with my toes and the curvature of the concrete forced the rest of my foot to extend and unfold.
Mind you, I did look silly walking down the road, stepping up and down, up and down, as if one leg were shorter than the other. But I was walking at five-thirty in the morning, so who was going to notice? The important thing is that it worked.
What I took away from the incident was that I could do one of two things when I faced an obstacle related to my Parkinson's: I could wallow in self-pity and write off some of my favorite activities in the process, or I could look beyond the difficulties and search instead for ways to beat the problems. The obstacle would still be there, but my reaction to it would make all the difference.
I'm not advocating some Pollyanna approach to life that is blindly hopeful and obnoxiously cheerful. Those kinds of people are just as exasperating to me as they are to everyone else. What I'm suggesting is that, while we must look at the reality of our circumstances, we shouldn't allow ourselves to get mired in the negative. Yes, we need to acknowledge our difficulties and concede that we have limitations. But then we must optimistically move forward anyway. We either stagnate or we move ahead. The only thing we can't do is go back.
My symptoms have affected many different areas of my life: walking, sleeping, sitting, typing, reading, remembering, shaving, showering, even talking. Cheryl often feels the need to finish my sentences. Of course, she's always done that, so that one is a little hard to measure. But the bottom line is I've had to make the decision to push ahead quite a few times at this point. And as much as it depends on me, I'm going to continue to opt for optimism.