Urgent!

As I mentioned in another post, my initial response to finding out I have Parkinson's disease, was to go into information gathering mode. I spent hours on the internet researching different treatment models, experimental drugs in the pipeline, promising clinical trials, medication information and on and on until I started to feel confident that I had a level of expertise about Parkinson's disease. When you have an illness, especially a chronic illness, most especially a degenerative chronic illness, you want to feel that you have control over something. I was also fortunate to find an online forum for people with Parkinson's disease, as well as other chronic illnesses, such as MS, Crohn's disease, and a host of others. The combination of gaining an understanding of what it means to live with a chronic illness in general and Parkinson's disease in particular, along with the support of an online community was an enormous help in weathering the storm of learning to live with this unwelcome visitor. I kept this up for at least a couple of years. Sometime after that point I started feeling tired, tired of too much information, tired of not enough information, tired of obsessing, tired, mostly, of just thinking about it all the time.

As any of us who regularly use the internet know, the availability of information out there in the ethers is a wonderful thing. It can also be an overwhelming thing. I started this blog for two reasons: I needed it, and I also thought that it could be helpful to other people living with a chronic illness. And it seems that for whatever reason, people like what I have to say. I know this because you are reading and coming back. So I've decided that it's time to take this up a notch. In the next week or so I'll be migrating this blog to another site at the nadgb.com domain. In addition to the blog, there will be an old-fashioned Web site. I will also be incorporating other features that I think will be helpful to people living with a chronic illness, as well as the people who love and care about and for a person living with a chronic illness.

Oh, I mentioned up in paragraph one that I started this blog for two reasons. Recently I've come up with a third reason. After eight years of time squandered, time our country could have pushed forward on issues that directly impact us all, issues like stem cell research and affordable health care, we have an opening. Honestly, I don't want to waste another moment. I am tired of waiting for someone to take action. I want to take action. I want all of us to take action.

What do you want to do? I'd like you to tell me as I set up my new site. What would be helpful to you in managing the cards that we were dealt? And what would you like the powers-that-be to know about your struggle? I hope that you will take the time to think about it and let me know. It's urgent.

angela@nadgb.com.