Cindy Beth Bittker with Michael J.  Fox and Diana Rose Levine H is for HOPE You need credible sources of hope. Find people who were diagnosed around your age with similar circumstances who are 5, 10, and 15 years out.  There is no better source of hope than seeing someone who you can identify with and see how they are doing. Replace your fears about what you will be like with where these people are. You have to meet a real live person living in your community or it won’t help you much. You need to meet a whole person, who you might even see again. Plus, a local person can gi ..read more

Weekly Wednesday Virtual Support Group for Women with Parkinson’s Disease Every Wed Eve 7PM ES We are like"Cheers" for women with Parkinson's Disease, except no beer.  Sometimes you wanna go Where everybody knows your name And they're always glad you came You wanna be where you can see Our troubles are all the same No speakers. No topics. No agendas. No membership. No sponsors. No fees. No RSVP.  We just talk about whatever is on our minds! The group is open to all women with PD of all ages and stages from all across the USA, Canada and anywhere language and time zones permit. No R ..read more

I have Parkinson’s Disease. I was diagnosed in 2005. I was 48. Two years later I met my first person with Parkinson’s Disease, Jim Maurer. Jim had 25 years on me. I didn’t know why at the time, my knowing nothing about my disease and Jim being the only other person I knew who also had Parkinson’s Disease,  Jim took me under his wing, brought me Washington DC, introducing me to the most influential people on Parkinson’s disease. I met with Senators, Representatives, the family of the late Mo Udall, the  respected Representative from Arizona, and the first member of Congress to dev ..read more

Most all patients with Parkinson’s disease will develop Humpty-Dumpty syndrome. It is a syndrome we get from our doctors. Our doctors get it from our health care system. It may be a silly name, but it’s a serious condition. Those of us with Parkinson's disease know how many medical problems come with the disease. There are the obvious, visible ones that make our movement abnormal, like tremor, rigidity, slow movement and postural instability. There are problems with functions that should happen automatically, but don’t, like: blinking, smelling, vision, swallowing, digesting, elimin ..read more

I have long lamented wasting my college education at The University of Michigan getting wasted. If I had a redo, I would study architecture or engineer, graphic design, economics or marketing.  I could have been conducting experiments in the science lab, instead I experimenting with drugs in the Arboretum. Then came Parkinson’s disease, and who knew? It turns out experimenting with drugs was the one skill I would need most in my life.   I was reminded of this when I had a conversation with a friend the other day. She was talking about well-known patients who have reversed th ..read more

Most doctors and Parkinson’s Disease experts  pass off commonly held beliefs as “facts,” erroneously putting us behind the 8-ball from the get-go.  The most prevalent of then is defining Parkinson’s disease an an “incurable, neurodegenerative disease,” (meaning it can’t be cured and it always gets worse over time.) Those are not the facts that I know as a patient living with Parkinson’s disease over 15 years. Firstly, we don’t have an “incurable” disease. We have a disease that just hasn’t been cured yet. EVERY cured disease was once an incurable disease. Secondly, we don’t ..read more

My dad was a dentist in Warren, Michigan.  My dad was very Type A. Highly organized. He built his office in Warren, Michigan in the early in the 1970's, where there were no houses. Just  to speak of. Farm land. No neighborhoods. Just farms. And auto plants.  General Motors, Chrysler, Dodge, Chevrolet. When auto worker unions succeeded in getting dental insurance, his practice grew 20+ fold (from 1 dentist to 27.)  My dad had a lot of patients and had developed a notation system on the patient card files to identify pertinent matters in a patient's life, a spouse died, a ..read more

Dressed as a 100 year old for the 100th day of school celebration ..read more

Relentless self-advocacy Is the key to our survival. Keep fighting Parkinson’s disease, our greatest enemy and rival. Don’t ever let anyone stand in your way. Don’t give up fighting because of what experts say. People with Parkinson’s need to be wary of popular opinions masquerading as facts. Many can undermine your efforts to turn your disease progression back. Our goal is to get better, not just stop disease progression. IMHO, any doctor who shoots for less should exit the profession. To the doctors who tell their patients Parkinson’s disease does not cause pain: “Tape your left arm to ..read more

Managing lift with Parkinson's is lot like being a plate spinner at the circus. Early on in the course of our disease we just have a few disease management tasks because we have less problems and our meds work better. We still have energy and can pretty much handle the disease alone. As time goes on, like the plate spinner adding more plates, we add on more medications and have more drug interactions to manage. When symptoms get worse or new ones develop our lives get busier managing our disease and it's challenging to keep all our plates spinning. If we're not vigilant and can't keep up, pl ..read more