Parkinson's Disease

So lately my dad has been getting worse. Like in a hurry. During the peak of tax season when I was working nearly 6 days a week and the weather was a mess I didn't get to visit my parents as often as normal. When things started to slow down and I could sit down and talk to Mom on the phone she began to tell me about some things that had been going on with Dad. He just seemed to not want to do anything. He was sleeping more and eating less and since the weather was awful he was getting no exercise. Plus he was having trouble sitting up and moving at all. It had gotten to the point where Mom had to help him to the bathroom.

So they went to the doctor and he prescribed vitamins and physical therapy. Dad started to take those and he seemed better for a day or two and then he got a cold. The cold really got him down and Mom had all she could take. So she took him to the ER Friday night. We were afraid he had another brain tumor and that was causing all of this out of character behavior. The doctors ran tons of tests and everything came up normal... or at least as normal as a cancer patient can be. Even the MRI of his brain showed no new activity or tumors. Then the neurologist made a pretty big diagnosis - Parkinson's Disease.

I always thought that PD was just the tremors and uncontrollable muscle movement. But it turns out there is more. Tonight I decided to do a little internet research and the doctor is absolutely right. There are all of these symptoms that Dad has been showing for months that we had no idea were symptoms of PD. So the doctors are starting him out on some PD meds to see if he has any reactions to them. To be truthful Dad has taken the PD meds before in what the doc called "baby doses". I think he gave them to Dad after one of his surgeries or seizures... it's hard to remember. SO there we are. On top of everything that my poor little daddy has been thru we now have Parkinson's to add to it.

One good thing I do have to say is that this morning, when the oncologist came in to check Dad he was talking to Mom and said something about how his cancer was diagnosed in 2008. Mom looked at him kind of strange and corrected him. It was 2007 not 2008. Then he said, "Wow, it's been almost three years. That's really unheard of with this type of cancer."

There are times when I get so angry about everything that Dad's been thru. It just doesn't seem fair that God would bring this kind of pain and misery to Dad and to our family. But what the doctor said this morning made me really think... God didn't have to give us these last three years. He could've taken Dad a long time ago but he didn't. I always try to remind myself that there's a reason for everything and that God's timing is perfect. We may not understand it but we just have to accept it. There's a reason God's given us extra time and we've just got to make sure that we take advantage and make the most of it.