Contarini fountain on Piazza Vecchia, Citta Alta, Bergamo city, Italy

I love languages. I teach Spanish, speak Italian, understand Catalan and read French and Portuguese fairly well. Perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that understanding Parkinson’s disease (PD)—and gaining a new understanding of my husband with PD—felt like learning yet another language.

Grammar is a language’s underlying structure, and like a student racing through lessons on verb tenses, grammatical gender and pronouns, my husband and I sought the rules and patterns for Parkinson’s. We read books, made appointments with doctors and met others who had PD. While we found some helpful, general guidelines, the unknowns seemed to outnumber the rules.

For me, loving my husband has meant learning all his languages: Italian, Bergamasco and now Parkinson’s.

Read more in Folks.

This is an external article from our library

Everyone is talking about caregiving, but it can still be difficult to find meaningful information and real stories that go deep. We read (and listen to and watch and look at) the best content about caregiving and bring you a curated selection.

Have a great story about care work? Use our contact form to submit it to us so we can share it with the community!

Related Articles

Cleaning Instructions

Cleaning Instructions

I can’t. I can’t do this anymore, I say to myself, my mantra, my cantra, the same thing I said when he first needed a wheelchair, when he first...

Popular categories

Finances
Burnout
After Caregiving
Housing
Relationships
Finding Meaning
Planning
Dying
Finding Support
Work
Grief

Don't see what you're looking for? Search the library

Share your thoughts

1 Comment

  1. The love of my life for the last 17 years was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease nearly 4 years ago, at age 52. He had a stooped posture, tremors, muscle stiffness, horrible driving skills, and slow movement. He was placed on Sinemet 50/200 at night for 7 months and then Sifrol and rotigotine were introduced which replaced the Sinemet but he had to stop due to side effects. He started having hallucinations, lost touch with reality. Suspecting it was the medications I took him off the Siferol (with the doctor’s knowledge) In March this year his primary physician suggested we started him on Natural Herbs Centre ( Naturalherbscentre. com ) Ayurveda Parkinson’s Protocol which eased his anxiety a bit, i’m happy to report this PD Ayurvedic treatment worked very effectively. His Parkinson’s is totally under control, he had a total decline in symptoms, the tremors, shaking, stiffness, slow movement and speech problems stopped. I can personally vouch for these remedy but you would probably need to decide what works best for you

    Reply

Share your thoughts and experiences

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Join our communities

Whenever you want to talk, there’s always someone up in one of our Facebook communities.

These private Facebook groups are a space for support and encouragement — or getting it off your chest.

Join our newsletter

Thoughts on care work from Cori, our director, that hit your inbox each Monday morning (more-or-less).

There are no grand solutions, but there are countless little ways to make our lives better.

Share your insights

Caregivers have wisdom and experience to share. Researchers, product developers, and members of the media are eager to understand the nature of care work and make a difference.

We have a group specifically to connect you so we can bring about change.

%d bloggers like this: