A GOOD DAY FOR DAYDREAMING

I wonder if God intended us to go through mood swings or were we suppose to stay up and helpful always...Some call this malady, I am enduring, brain fog. Others call it depression and if your real fancy you could call it writers block. I just call it a funk and it goes with this time of the year. This house becomes pretty small in January as does my world. My brain just feels so sorry for itself and looks for stimulation. Today I addressed housework so when the weather changes I can get out. Some of the nicest things have happened lately so I have to realize that not everyone is having problems....Being a redneck though , I am glad my Christmas lights and tree are down and packed away and can spring be too far away because the first seed catalog graced my doorway today......I think I'll bypass the housework and sit in the recliner for a while and day dream.......love pokie

THOUGHTS ABOUT ROSEMARY

If you have never visited Patientslikeme.com you may have missed a very unique lady and one I have loved since the first time I read her posts on the forum. Long before I knew what a forum was I would read of her struggles with multiple health problems. My amazement at how she could travel from doctor to doctor, going through test after test and still carry on a business on the Internet just drew me in like a moth to the flame. I would sneak into her blog site very late at night and read her thoughts for the day and think to myself...."Isn't this neat? She can get it all out and be ready to start a new day." From stuffed toys to her dads old car, Parkinson's Disease and not, to other diseases no one can pronounce. Then one day she said, "I can't come back here, I don't have Parkinson's" I was crushed. She did comeback and she continued to mentor me on my long journey. How naive I was at that point in life. Denying that depression would ever set in. Denying that anger from constant pain would take over MY life. Little did Rosemary know that every time she came back she spurred me on. Once she referred to herself as a computer geek. I laughed at that statement until I actually learned some of the things she has accomplished. In my small way this morning I would like to send a thank you out to my friend, Dirty Butter. Thank you for the very first time you referred to me as "the one that goes by PokieToo" on your site. May your days continue to be blessed and new medical miracles come your way. I hope you know just how much you mean to so many and especially me....pokie

THIS FEELS SO RIGHT

For days now I have scurried around like a little mouse on a mission, going here and there trying to get everything done for some unknown reason. I feel like I have waited all my life to see the world take this turn. I can feel God smiling. For the first time people around me are openly talking about religion and race. Love and relationships are drifting into those conversations as well. I have talked to so many people in the last two days who spent the Inauguration Day glued to the TV, as I did and cried....all day, but unlike the tears of fear on 9-11, they were tears of joy. I was in Charleston, S.C. when Martin Luther King died and was taken out of town to the islands because I was white and the city was burning. Fear and the associations that had been set in me from birth governed my life at that time and though I never thought about it I was very narrow minded and came by it naturally.. I can also remember campaigning for John Kennedy while only in the fifth grade and a huge button with his picture on it that I wore to school every day..Franklin School, Cape Girardeau, Missouri...Schoolyard Politics. I truly loved JFK an when he was gone a part of me just shut down until Tuesday. I did my job and voted but kept my feelings out of the reach of anyone. No one would ever offer me security and take it away again. Tuesday I felt loved and I loved it. I felt it was once again important that I was a citizen of the U.S.A. I was once again a real American and I had faith and every one was talking about it. God was visibly everywhere. From the cashier at WalMart to the meter reader for the power company, everyone had something to say and it was all filled with hope and enthusiasm. Then as the whole world watched it was announced that Ted Kennedy had suffered another seizure and had been taken to the hospital....The guard had changed for ever! Thank you President Obama and your beautiful family for having a dream and pursuing it. Thank you God for once again taking the lowliest of men and guiding him to lead. Thank you for one more experience in such an experience filled life......Pokie

Here's to Us....

I was drifting through my pictures today and came across this picture of the coffee cup Karen sent several of us back before she retired. We use to get up at four or five California time just so we could clown around in chat before Karen would go to work. We have since realized this deprived us of precious sleep which added to Karens' misery at the time, but boy did we ever have fun in those early morning hours.....We'd meet and once we got there would lift our cups and celebrate a new day. Carefree times were they. Much before news of a Depression or economy crunch. Long before worsening diagnoses for some of us....We were just out there as friends do playing. I have decided not to loose that this year and I do realize it would be ever so easy to let it slip away. We're older and things are harder. We sleep later in the morning and get to gether later on but one thing has not changed...we are friends for life. We choose to celebrate each day and move on. In the past year I have become a new mother to some and a new sister to others. I have become a connection to religion when none seemed available or wanted. I have traveled and hugged some of the most incrediable people ever. There is an awesome feeling in the air in the United States of America right now and I love it. A feeling of hope and promise and may it continue. This is the best country in the world and any thing is possible here. People have come from other land to settle here and made millions and the world was better for it but things are not important and as our economy falters so many friends will be called on to help someone else and I hope you do it with a happy heart. It takes only a minute each day to bring a smile to someones face or to give a hug to someone who has had none for for too long. With the beginning of a new year and a new administration, letssquare our shoulders off and decide to get things straightened out. One on one we can change for the better, we can find a cure, we can make America safe for all. Will we ever get back to the safety and peace of the fiftys? Maybe not...but it is a beautiful dream is it not. If we could just be able to stop the killings arond the world and get along.....How can we stop fighting over seas when we can no longer sit on our front porch without fear of being part of a drive by shooting. In the early ninties there was something called honor among thieves. Now there are no bosses and the idea is.... you answer to no one. Not so, my friends. You will always be accountable to your Higher Being no matter who he may be. Sooner or later the time will come to settle the score card and there are so many young who are coming or will come up short on their cards. I hope my generation does not give up being mentors for the young in the coming year. Tthough it is a hard road to walk on and not to be traveled without a good heart. Tthe youth of today are really going to need us old(????) to survive what is lurking out there though they will never admit it.....so as I ramble on trying to reach an indeterminate end I will pray for peace for my grandkids and an increasing knowledge that the very small things in life are the most important and the treasure of inheritance may be a quiet monment or a good story from another time. With that thought I raise my coffee cup and wish you peace and improved health in this new beginning...love pokie

Friends on all Sides

Any time you are dealing with the mind there is a certain amount of weirdness associated from all sides. People on the outside say, "Well she's a little crazy" and at times you may say to yourself "Am I crazy or what?" but trust me there is still allot of sane in these Parkinson minds that are traveling around this country. Our bodies may be tired and misshapen but the light is still very much on in the house. Today I was on the phone most of the day and sat down for supper with a definite smile on my face thinking how far we have come in trying to find a cure. True I have only been out there looking for a short time.....six months to a year, but so much has happened in that time. The places I have been and the people I have met leave me with such a feeling of hope for our future as healthier patients that were once categorized and forgotten. New exercise programs are being developed as we speak to help Parkinson's patients live a better life and keep moving. My weight plays a factor in my Parkinson's or Parkinson's plays a factor in my weight. Whatever, this will be the year to turn this around if at all possible. I am lucky in this respect for having a fiend in David Zid, author and personal trainer. David's home base is Columbus, Ohio and first we met indirectly through his dad in Atlanta, Georgia at the YOPN Convention. Several months later I ran into David and family again in Indianapolis, Indiana at a Parkinson Symposium and I was just mesmerized by his teaching technique. We hugged at this meeting and I promised David to address the weight issue and things would be better when next we met. Now several months later again and David and I are setting up a symposium of our own in of all places Vandalia, Illinois in May. Hopefully uniting our area in Parkinson care and possibilities for treatment. So many advances have been made that are not filtering back to the patients.....The LSVT program makes a huge difference and yet there are speech therapist who know nothing of the program. With this disease you MUST be your own caregiver, your own advocate and sometimes your own physician. You must be constantly on the lookout for something new or old that makes the day a little better. Be it a warm blanket or a phone call from across the United States, everyday must hold a new" something" that helps. So many of us with this disease have no family or friend to talk to and without a friend the pain just grows and grows until it is unbearable. I am so fortunate to have found Patientslikeme.com last October while looking for my email. Now over a year later it is very much my home away from home and believe me has helped me in untold ways to go to battle and win in many respects. Often the meds don't work and you can't get through to the doctor and you start to feel no one really cares, but as close as a post away, there is usually someone who is feeling just as bad or has been there and can help you out. A new slant to "One on One" or "Be a Friend, Make a Friend" In the coming year I hope to share my friends and family with each of you so that you too may benefit from them as I have. David and I will continue on our path and I am sure my life will forever be changed by our chance meeting. After two very long years in silence, my family is coming to the foreground to help in my crusade. I can not tell you how proud this makes me. If they could be at the Walk in April my life would be complete but if they can't just knowing they are watching will be great too. And last but not least, To Susan, and Jo Ann and Paula......WoW

THE GOAT LADY

This time of year I am constantly searching: searching for my glasses, notes I wrote on the back of an envelope, numbers I just knew I could remember and faces that drift in and out of my memory. I have to have my house in order, so to say, when the snow really starts to fly. I remind myself of a wild animal in that respect...always stocking in for the unexpected. The unexpected has never been to far away from me, yet in the very worst of times I have always been protected....I think this poem might describe why....

Learn to Recognize a Blessing While it's very difficult for mankind to understand GODS INTENTIONS AND HIS PURPOSE, and the WORKINGS OF HIS HAND. if we observe the miracles that happen every day, We cannot help but be convince that in HIS WONDROUS WAY GOD makes what seemed unbearable and painful and distressing Easily acceptable when we view it as a blessing...

by Helen Steiner Rice

Were it not for this obsession I have to clean and organize, this little, very important book, would have been forgotten in my over stuffed mind. THE GOAT LADY by Jane Bregoli. This is a quote

"Many years ago I became ill with arthritis," she said quietly. My bones ached so much that I could hardly walk. I had to quit my job. There was no medicine to help me, but the doctor suggested i try drinking goat's milk. So I bought my first goat and called her Girl. I could barely walk to the barn. My hands hurt so much when i tried to milk her that I cried. Girl turned around and licked the tears off my face because she knew I was suffering." the story is short but what a dedication to Noelie Lemire Houle, who was born in 1899 in Quebec, Canada

Noelie gave her extra goat kids to the Heifer Project International, a non profit organization. Since 1944 the Heifer Project has helped More than 5 million families in approximately 125 countries move toward self reliance through the gift of livestock and training. You can learn more about their work at www.heifer.org.

EVERYDAY IS SUCH A BLESSING TO ME.......THANK YOU...pokie