Working in the hospital has allowed me to care first hand for patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s is a very hard disease for a patient and family to deal with as it drastically changes the lifestyle of the patient as the disease progresses. I have seen families have to make many sacrifices to care for a loved one with Parkinson’s disease. I have also seen some of the sadness and frustration in the patient that can come from needing to ask help with meniscal tasks such as brushing ones teeth.
Parkinson’s disease is a disease that many people have heard about and can recognize some of the symptoms, but don’t fully understand what actually happens to a patient diagnosed with this disease. They believe it is a disease that affects the elderly by causing them to begin to shake uncontrollably until they can’t control their movements anymore. This is fair description of this unfortunate disease, but there is so much more to it than that. A lot of times it is misunderstood that Parkinson’s disease is something only the elderly get. As this is most often the truth, people as young as their mid 20’s can be diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease.
Resent research has interestingly discovered that even though the disease isn’t caused by a virus or bacteria, it spreads from one region of the brain to next similar to how a virus would spread. Some of the implications of this is the disease starts in the area of the brain that involves muscle control. This is why some of the first signs of the disease is muscle spasms and shaking that progressively gets worse. As the disease moves to other areas of the brain it begins to affect mood and cognitive thinking. When the disease affects the mood areas of the brain it becomes especially hard to deal with because it can drastically change a patients behavior and personality, even causing depression.
So why haven’t we discovered a cure for Parkinson’s if we have been doing research on it for such a long time? Well as is the case with many neurodegenerative diseases, it seems as if multiple pathways go wrong at the same time and it is hard to pinpoint which pathway is initially causing the disease. Within Parkinson’s there is issues with the pathway that cleans up damaged molecules. There is also oxidative stress, inflammation, and mitochondrial malfunction. As it is hard to determine what is causing these issues the current method for treating the disease is to treat the symptoms described above, but this doesn’t ever slow the progression of the disease. Scientists have isolated a few mutated genes that appear to increase the likelihood of getting the disease, but are still working on developing a medication that could halt the progression of the disease.
The upside of Parkinson’s disease is that the life expectancy isn’t much less than that of someone without the disease. That doesn’t mean it isn’t incredibly difficult to live with, something that is clear to see whenever you observe someone struggling with the symptoms of the disease. It makes me happy to know that researchers are straining their brains to find a cure for this disease. Because of the difficulties that come with living with this disease, I hope that our advancements in technology will allow us to narrow in on a treatment for this disease in the near future.
The Hard Life with Parkinson's Disease
