Author: Michelle Terrill Heath

People living with chronic and often incurable disease cannot will their condition away. It’s up to those without those challenges to notice, step up, offer, be willing, engage and support those brave enough to come out of isolation and grace our world with their presence. […]

Andy has loved weight lifting for most of his life and Parkinson’s stopped that activity for years, because it was too dangerous. Nowadays, I drive Andy to the gym and he works with a gifted personal trainer who has a deep understanding of Parkinson’s challenges. […]

Parkinson’s is both a movement disorder AND a neurological disease and this twofold simultaneous condition creates a set up for risky behavior to occur. Risky behavior and wellness don’t go together.  I don’t know if Parkinson’s disease by itself actually causes a patient to engage […]

Andy’s whispered words carry weight. After Andy gently told some musician friends to “Keep practicing!”  Another friend observed, “Andy says in a two word whisper more than most people say in an hour of talking.” As I age and have plenty of years under my […]

Many Parkinson’s patients experience a symptom called Bradykinesia- or slowness of movement. The cause of this symptom is a lack of dopamine but the effect I’ve seen in Andy is frustration and a lack of tolerance both in himself and in people interacting with him- […]

We know a spell of negative thoughts can occur in any person’s life, but a tendency towards negative thinking is actually part of the symptom menu that gets triggered with Parkinson’s disease. Looking back, I can identify negative thought patterns in Andy that presented a […]

Andy loved being part of the team. His life was productive and had purpose as long as we found ways to work around his Parkinson’s limitations. We did this by paying close attention and using timing and the tools we had, correctly. Andy’s experience with […]

For most people, swallowing seems like one of those automatic parts of life, like your heart beating  or breathing. Parkinson’s compromises the automatic part. A patient can have a hard time controlling their saliva in the ways healthy people are able to and instead, a […]

The cognitive danger Andy lives with is not an inability to participate but rather an inability to keep up. In life, we all have our pace of moving, thinking and doing. To get along in the world we match ourselves to other’s paces and rhythms. […]

Living this way, with a husband who used to express himself fully, wholeheartedly and clearly, is sometimes painful for me. There are days I wish I handled it all better, and one of these recently happened. Some people with Parkinson’s have physical symptoms of numbness […]