Advocacy through the Unity Walk
By Birthe Myers*
Editor's Note: The annual Parkinson's Unity Walk offers a chance
for thousands of PWP's and their friends and family to gather and
interact with one another. Held at New York City's Central Park
(this year April 24), the masses of participants are both emotional
and inspiring. (This year over 7,000 attended with well over one
million research dollars raised and still counting!)
The weather was glorious on Saturday in New York. The little new
buds on the trees looked luminously green against the blue sky, and
the red-purple Azaleas were spectacular in the sunlight. Last year
it rained. Last year our son and his wife were the whole team, this
year we were able to join them.
I confess that we skipped the speeches and the official opening, I
simply could not handle the crowds among the tents, so we sat on a
bench, waiting to join the walk when it got started. There were so
many more people there than I had expected. Only one in 20 or maybe
even only one in 40 of the crowd was a person with PD, all the rest
were the wonderful people who had come out to walk in support of us.
I don't think of myself as sentimental, but when the throng of
walkers began to file by in front of us, and I saw how many, many
people were there, walking for us, walking to help us, I was
overwhelmed. I sat there, just looking on, as hundreds of walkers
came streaming by, the healthy and the wobbly, all walking with such
a will to beat this monster.
When I had collected myself, we joined the crowd and walked the
loop. It was a powerful experience. Walking that walk called out far
stronger feelings than I had expected
Pictures ...
http://www.unitywalk.org/unitywalk2004_11.shtml
*Birthe Myers lives in Eastern Pennsylvania and spend summers in
Western Denmark where she's from. Born in 1938, she calls herself
"one of the old onset PD's." Although officially diagnosed four
years ago, she showed unmistakable symptoms seven years ago. Like
many of those when first diagnosed, she absolutely refused to accept
the verdict, and tried her best to convince the doctors that it was
just stress or hysteria. But looking back, Birthe is now convinced
that she actually had mild PD for years. It's still progressing
slowly, for which she is VERY grateful.