Parkinson’s Dreams about Me: My Dance with the Shaking Palsy

Whether you are newly diagnosed or a Parkinson’s disease veteran, whether young onset or late onset, or if you are a care partner for someone with Parkinson’s, you are likely to find something new and interesting in this book. Relying on stories from the author’s life with Parkinson’s disease, as well as from before disease onset, Rick Hermann writes outside the box, following his nose on the trail towards understanding his disease, not only the motor symptoms that affect one’s ability to move, but also the cognitive, behavioral, and psychiatric impacts . Life with Parkinson’s disease is rarely, if ever, written about quite in this manner, combining humility, honesty, humor, and original insights, revealing a life in progress rather than one in retreat. This modest book of essays, autobiographical sketches, and poetry is neither overly hopeful nor hopelessly pessimistic. It is merely honest. Doctors, patients, family, friends and care partners will find this a journey worth taking. Dr. James Parkinson called it the “shaking palsy” in his historic 1817 essay. Now we call it Parkinson’s disease. When Rick Hermann felt the first symptoms in February 1992, he was 41. Twenty years later, he writes about his attempt to find meaning in a life shadowed by a progressive and incurable neurological illness.