I wasn’t expecting to cry at a medical conference. The annual ATMRD conference is full of remarkable moments: Researchers unveil discoveries, clinicians share new approaches to care, and people living with Parkinson’s tell stories of resilience and struggle. But sometimes the most important lesson comes from a simple question. This year, that question came from […]
At the recent World Parkinson’s Congress we had a simple flip book on our Yes, And…X table titled: “How we’re Fucking Parkinson’s.” It got a lot of attention. I was ready for people to be offended. If they were, they kept it to themselves. What I did hear a lot of was “oh yeah…”…like there […]
A few weeks ago, I came across a new paper by my colleagues Drs. Bradley McDaniels, Gregory Pontone, and Indu Subramanian that gave me a phrase I’d never heard before: Intolerance of Uncertainty. I immediately thought, “Well, that’s Parkinson’s.” And then I thought, as you might be, “That’s life.” The new paper defines intolerance of […]
What Happened at the World Premiere of Third Base Surprised Even Us We knew people were excited about the world premiere of Boys of Summer: Third Base at the World Parkinson Congress in Phoenix. We did not expect what happened next. The line to get in snaked across the conference floor. Some knew about the […]
My dad has lived with Parkinson’s disease for more than 25 years. Like many people, when he was first diagnosed, we mostly thought about tremors, stiffness, and slowness. The things we could see. But Parkinson’s is so much more than the visible things. A few years ago, my dad began having hallucinations. Dan & Robert […]
There are wonderful films about Parkinson’s disease (PD). Important, brave, educational, and inspiring films. But there has never been another documentary series about PD like Boys of Summer. Four films spanning 22 years of lived history with this stupid, poorly understood, beast of a disease. 2004 We didn’t set out to make history. We just […]
Rewriting Parkinson’s… one story at a time. For years, our work has lived under the name Yes, And…eXercise!, a program rooted in improvisation, storytelling, and the belief that even in the face of Parkinson’s, there is still space to create, connect, and grow. That belief hasn’t changed. But something deeper has come into focus: This […]
There are movies you enjoy. There are movies you remember. And then there are movies that re-wire your DNA. For me, that movie was Star Wars. I was seven years old. And I didn’t just see it…I entered it. I saw it three times in the theater (that’s all we had back then), returning each […]
Today was supposed to mark a turning point. Every business has to reach and maintain the heart of its customers or risk breaking the relationship. After three years of patchwork care, including rotating aides, last-minute cancellations, and more “emergencies” than any system should reasonably absorb, we made the decision to move my dad from a […]
On Saturday April 18th, I had the honor of standing in a room filled with strength, honesty, humor, and something that feels like it’s getting harder to find in the world: real connection. To the Western Pennsylvania Parkinson Foundation, and to every person who showed up for the Living Well Conference : thank you. Christine […]
