Late Night With An Incurable Optimist

So, I started reading Micheal J. Fox's Always Looking Up, The Adventures Of An Incurable Optimist. I want to clarify that Parkinson's Research is one of the biggest goals in my life and support for this disease is so important. I've lost one of the most important people in my life to PD and cancer and have another who has been diagnosed.

So needles to say, it's important to me.

So, i'm only part way into Part I: Work and knowing fully that before I opened the novel I was already a huge fan of Micheal's, this book has already changed my life. The way he describes his day to day challenges and his trials throughout his early years, of diagnosis, force me to remember all of the trials I witnessed myself.

I remember the shuffling gait, the stooped posture, the tremors, the fidgits, the dementia, the medication. If you have ever dealt with this with a family memeber or friend, or yourself, you know how taxing it can be on your emotions. It's so hard to watch someone struggle with this and knowing in your heart that there is nothing you can do to fix it.

At least not right now. Research is still in my opinion 15 years from being applicable to the situation. Parkinson's is so different for everyone that it effects because everyone's brain is hardwired differently. If we were all wired the same, and how boring would that be, we would have had a cure for this years ago. But, being as it is, we don't and we aren't.

I would just like to personally thank those effected by PD for their never ending strength and for those who are looking at the darker side, please please please, keep your head up, and be like Mike!!! be an incurable optimist, because it could always be worse. Be so thankful for the time you have and had. It only gets better, or as Micheal puts it, "it only gets... worse." But I don't think he means that life gets harder. But, that life could get harder. You could choose to dwell on the hard parts or you could just get over it and enjoy what you have now so that you'll always have those memories.

I hope that you get the opportunity to read this book. It is amazing and it helps for funding his foundation. I know he doesn't pocket all of the money because he is far too dedicated in the research and foundation and you pick that up on the first page.

So for the most fitting of exits for the evening,
Remember to always Dance Out All The Pains