Day One

Happy New Year. As is the custom for many, I’m setting my goals right here in 2019:

I want Parkinson’s Place Las Vegas to be the Southern Nevada leader in helping the newly diagnosed know they have resources and other people going through similar challenges right here. We are better together.

The program we’re working on here to make that happened is called “Day One”. I’ve conducted many interviews with people who have PD over the years and the question I ask most often is “What did you feel when you were first diagnosed?”

It’s important question because that moment is so terrifying to so many. In that moment, life can feel like it is over - or that it’s going to stretch for long period of suffering. As you’ll hear many times if you haven’t already, if you’ve met one person with PD, you’ve met one person with PD. That statement encompasses both the opportunity and fear regarding the diagnosis.

The overwhelmingly good news is that what we can all do to positively affect how to manage PD has improved dramatically. At PPLV, our job isn’t to necessarily provide all these services - though many of our board members do work actively with people with PD in Southern Nevada daily. It’s to give you a soft place to land, a refuge in your fear about what’s next, and the knowledge that you have a group of people who care, have been where you are in some form and have your back.

We look forward to sharing this with you in 2019.

-written by Robert Cochrane