About the book
If you are an honorable member of the P club, you will find here something of yourself. You will also find a lot of me (author’s privilege) and some way forward for us all. I stepped to my girlfriend’s apartment, took a deep breath, and smelled the oxtail cooking on the stove. I don’t really like this type of stew, but it smelled gorgeous as anything other than industrial pink soap would. My girlfriend froze to the spot. It was known that I could not smell anything. Only when I told her I smelled laurel leaves and allspice, then she understood I wasn’t pulling her leg. The juries are still out on the question of how, when, and why. There is a sense to Parkinson’s, but sometimes we are all too occupied with our daily hell to notice between the ON and OFF states management and the pain. The research community is in no better shape; neither is the medical community. Modern medicine brought wonders to our species, but when a researcher pitches for a research grant, he must keep it small enough so they will be able to win such a pitch. In the modern world, we must take a different approach. Gone are the days when a single researcher was shattered as a child when their grandmother went through the stages of Parkinson’s disease and then vowed to dedicate their lives to research and to the eradication of Parkinson’s. This could be a good holiday season movie (all rights reserved) but not a cure. Getting rid of Parkinson’s disease must take another approach, both scientifically and financially. Such a task must consider industrial interests that are beyond the traditional pharmaceutical companies. The latter may introduce methodic obstacles. Also, the financial backing for such research may not be the traditional pharmaceutical companies but some other player altogether. In the meanwhile, we must keep ourselves functioning, manage our ON and OFF states, and reinvent ourselves every day at a time
About the author
Rona Davis was born in June 1972 as a blond, hazel-eyed boy named Jaron. He lived quite a standard life: school, political activity, military service, university, a career in the software industry as a software architect, marriage, three kids, and divorce. The obvious next steps would have been renewed bachelorhood, great sex, existential crisis, finding God followed by acute cancer and sorrowful demise. Instead, she got diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, peeled off the excess baggage, and reinvented herself as a single-parent, lesbian woman. She was always appreciated by her potential though less by her actual achievements, which didn’t bother her one bit. She believes that patterns are the key to understanding anything in life and that optimism is a good strategy mainly because you only get miserable when confronted with life itself.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Need to Know on and off my parkinson challange
What to do when you are diagnosed
What should one do when he or she are diagnosed with Parkinson.
Food
What is the effect of food on Parkinson and vice versa what is the effect of Parkinson on food.
How could we get rid of Parkinson
Parkinson's disease has no known cure, L-dopa is simply a chemical way to tell our body to manufacture dopamine.
what will it take to find a cure, and who is the most unlikely yet crucial industrial force that has the most to benefit
Insurance
what do I need to know as a patient a caretaker or family about insurance requirements of Parkinson's
Activities of daily living
how does Parkinson's affect our daily living, to what extent and how.
Muscle related and non muscle related symptoms
what is the difference and are these genuinely Parkinson or caused by medication
Dopamine agonists
what are they good for and what should you watch out for