The Parkinson’s in Me
I was sitting in my college dorm room during my sophomore year at Concordia. My desk was cluttered as usual with the week’s homework. My phone began to ring; it was my mother. Cheerily, I answered with, “Hello!” expecting her happy response in return. But the happiness was not to be heard, and she solemnly asked how I was doing. I could immediately tell that something was wrong, and over the next few minutes, she informed me that my beloved uncle had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
That evening I cried, wondering how his life would change over the coming years. I wondered how I could support him, but vowed that we would not treat him differently simply because his developing condition had been given a name by a physician. In the back of my mind, I could not help but think of how similar I am to my uncle, bearing more of a resemblance to him than most of my family members. As a scientist myself, I know that external looks certainly do not have to be genetically linked to a disease such as this, but I could not avoid pondering the thought that our family medical history now included Parkinson’s disease.
I have heard that there comes a time in medical school in which too much knowledge is dangerous. After learning about a plethora of diseases, each medical student will introspectively become more aware of the body and will realize that he or she has all of them! This is exactly how I felt. Suddenly, my morning hand shakiness during class (from lack of protein and energy because breakfast had not fully digested) and an occasional drool during the night were not natural occurrences, but instead were pre-emptive indicators for Parkinson’s disease.
While it is silly to think this, especially in my young age because Parkinson’s disease is almost entirely seen later in life, these are the types of conclusions that make medical education so important in the general public. I cannot say that I really ever knew more than a trivial fact or two, and even after my uncle had been diagnosed, I hardly knew enough to begin judging my personal dispositions toward the disease.
But this week during my neurochemistry class, we delved into what is currently known about Parkinson’s disease in relation to what is actually occurring in the body. Overall, we learned that it is incredibly complex, and there are many avenues and factors that seem to contribute. I will try to focus on a couple that seemed to be front and center. The first is a little protein called Parkin. This busy protein is like a handyman in the neurons of your brain. Parkin’s job is to travel around the cell and physically mark things that don’t appear to be functioning properly or that should be cleaned up. This process is called ubiquitination, and it is Parkin’s way of telling your cell, “Hey, take out the trash!” = (Get rid of those toxins!) or “This needs fixing.” = (Patch up this cellular machine!) In one of the genetic forms of Parkinson’s disease, Parkin ends up being inactivated, so these cellular toxins accumulate, and the cell has trouble recycling some of its damaged organelles. This causes the eventual death of the neuron, and I’m sure you can imagine that the death of neurons in your brain would not be ideal.
A second aspect that seemed to be particularly important was another protein called alpha-synuclein which I will refer to from now on as AS. Normally, AS is found at the connections between neurons and helps to mediate the use of neurotransmitters, which are signaling molecules that your nerves use to communicate information. Anyway, for a variety of reasons (eg. mutation, damage, oxidative stress), in Parkinson’s patients, AS proteins tend to stick to each other in clumps which we have called Lewy bodies. Because they are large and “in the way” of your normal cell processes, they get transported outside of the cell where they are thought to accumulate and play a role in causing the death of the neurons.
As I mentioned before, Parkinson’s disease is incredibly complex, and scientists are still working vigorously to unearth its secrets. In the meantime, I am investing myself in a medical research career, and perhaps I too will one day work in this fight against Parkinson’s disease. I already was motivated by my own ambitions, but my uncle’s diagnosis two years ago has made this into a personal battle. Perhaps his condition developed naturally over time, or maybe he was pre-disposed by the genes in his DNA. In either case, I approach the situation with maturity, as it is simply another obstacle in the game of life with which to deal. If Parkinson’s disease is meant to appear in my future, then I will treat it with the respect it deserves. But to live life thinking about the obstacles that may happen is to live in fear─ I choose to live in control with the courage to overcome. Will you take a leap of faith to tackle the unknown, or do nothing and become an old man filled with regrets?
Final thoughts on Parkinson’s disease written by Steven Dotzler
The Parkinson's in Me
