Originally Posted by pegleg

John
I just read what you said:
Sadly I have to admit that I'm not as energetic or as pain-free as I was three years ago. I ache miserablely most of the time, and my coordination isn't as good as it was. This aspect is killing my mentally as well. I find that this whole evil thing we call PD eats at the soul as we watch our abilities wither away. It's like saltwater being poured on a statue. As the water trickles down, it eats through the stone structure so there's nothing left in the end.

Man, can I relate to your pain and enenrgy levels. I just wanted to tell you that your analogy is on the mark, except for the last few words . . . "there's nothing left in the end." My faith has sustained me - my hope that we go on to another place and get new bodies and are pain-free (dyskinesia-free!) and there is no sadness.

Even if some of you don't believe in an afterlife, remember that our attiude is all we have when things are looking down. Unlike MJ Fox, I am NOT "always looking up." But people such as the ones in this forum remind me that I am not in the worst situation, and I am the only one that can change the way I think. And hey, I'm not scolding anyone about negativism. I have had battles with depression for years. And I have come to learn that I cannot point my finger at my alcoholic father for my situation,, nor for the things that happen to me (like losing a career I loved to this #@!$% disease).

And even if you don't subscribe to the Christian "attitude," it's an attempt to live thinking positively. So here are a few quotes just to hopefully get anyone reading in the right frame of mind (I sometimes put them on 3X5" cards where I know I'll look frequently: on the mirror over my sink or on the sunvisor of my car where I can see it every time I look in my rear-view mirror (oh yeah, and on the refrigerator door! lol)

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. ~ Helen Keller

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Walt Emerson

Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. ~ John Maxwell
If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. ~Mary Engelbreit

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left. ~Hubert Humphrey

To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. ~Ken S. Keyes, Jr., Handbook to Higher Consciousness

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. ~Frank Lloyd Wright

(I hope I didn't preach too much - I just empathize with how you guys are feeling).
Peggy