Bischoff creates PD talks to discuss his fight with Parkinson's disease

Article Launched: 05/03/2007 11:00:00 PM PDT
By L. Alexis Young
Staff Writer

He's losing control of his fine motor skills, his hands tremor, and he's lost the ability to swing his right arm but Todd Bischoff hasn't lost hope.

Last year the Ontario resident was diagnosed with Young-Onset Parkinson's disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system.
There is no known cause or cure for the disease and though the former athlete knows his fate, he is refusing to let it kill his good spirits. Last fall, Bischoff founded PD Talks, an outlet for him to share and inspire others to overcome adversity in their lives.

"In the Parkinson's community, people spend a lot of time talking about our medicine, the side effects of our medicine, when we take our medicine, but we don't spend a lot of time talking about inspiration and hope so that's what PD Talks is for," said Bischoff, who was diagnosed at age 46.

"There is hope and you can still do things in life. I really try to focus on moving forward.

"For the most part, I'd been pretty healthy so the diagnosis was a surprise but it explained a lot of things," said Bischoff, who traded in his ice hockey stick for a microphone to become a motivational speaker.

"I had the three main motor symptoms. One is rigidity and I was having a lot of that primarily on my right side. I stopped playing hockey and things didn't get better. The other was slowness in movement and I had a resting tremor which was pretty minor. I was also having a lot of problems with my fine motor skills. Trying to get potato chips out of a bag was a huge ordeal."


Bischoff said a back injury that required two surgeries and more than five years of physical therapy that included learning to stand, walk, and dress himself, prepared him for the grim diagnosis that coincidently came during National Parkinson Awareness Month.

The 16 pills that Bischoff takes every day won't cure him, but they mask his symptoms. There is no typical day but Bischoff wakes up each morning ready to deal with his reality.

"Some say that adversity builds character but I believe adversity reveals character," said Bischoff, who retired from his career as a child life specialist to operate PD Talks.

"I've learned a lot about myself. When somebody is diagnosed with an incurable disease, people either ignore it and try to live out their life the best they can and then there's people who get involved. My thing is PD Talks, the education, the advocacy."

"It's a challenge going to speak because I'm on such a strict time frame with my medication," Bischoff said. "The good news is it doesn't kill you, the bad news is it doesn't kill you. It just gets progressively worse. The biggest challenge is not knowing how things are going to be from day to day, it's like being stuck on a roller coaster.

"The other part is you do know where you're going with Parkinson's. It's like being in a car and seeing a cliff up ahead. You know you're going to go off the end. That's the scary part."

A pharmaceutical company held an online contest seeking essays from people describing life with Parkinson's disease. Bischoff won the contest and a trip to New York to participate in the Parkinson's Unity Walk on April 28.

Maryum "May May" Ali, a friend of Bischoff's and daughter of bower Muhammad Ali, said he did not let the disorder change who he was, and he took it upon himself to learn as much as he could about Parkinson's disease.

"He's enthusiastic, warm, very funny, motivated, he's pretty much the same," Ali said about her friend of seven years. "All of those qualities stayed the same. Todd is so connected. Some people take it inward and they stay in the house. Todd may have a down day but he keeps moving forward. He's a helping person, that's just his personality. He gets involved with a lot of different organizations and charity events.

"One time he was working on a charity event and he called an asked me if I could get one of my dad's gloves signed to help raise money. He's just a helping person."
For more information about PD Talks, visit www.pdtalks.com.


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