Sarasota Happenings

We have been busy with exercise, visitors and events since returning from Knoxville after Thanksgiving. 

Right after we returned, our friends Pat and Steve from Colorado arrived for a visit which included a trip to Walt Disney World where we met up with our mutual friends Ted, who also has Parkinson’s, and his wife Jan.  We spent two nice days at Epcot and the Magic Kingdom with light crowds so we actually got to ride the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train with only a 25 minute wait!  (That’s all six of us zipping down the hill) And we got a lot of exercise walking around the parks.

We finished the visit up with our first trip to the Dali museum in St. Petersburg.   It contains the largest collection of his works outside of Spain, all donated by a couple who started collecting his work in 1940’s.  It was interesting to see his painting style change to surrealism as his career progressed.

This week we also attended Cause 4 Fashion, a lunch and fashion show to benefit the Neuro Challenge Foundation for Parkinson’s.  All of the models were either Parkinson’s patients or care persons and our friend Carolina was ‘on the runway’ again this year.  It was a well attended event and for a great cause.  Neuro Challenge sponsors over 30 monthly education and support programs in four Florida counties including our PD in Motion class and all at no charge.

As always, we try to exercise at least 5 days a week. We attend  the PD in Motion dance class every week and play tennis at least 3 times a week.  I attend Pedaling for Parkinson’s at the YMCA and Mara does her weight training routine twice a week.   Kathy, our pedaling instructor, continues to push our class with new routines which keeps it interesting.  I am amazed at the improvement in my aerobic base since we returned in September.   I continue to see a reduction in symptoms for up to 24 hours after each class.  If you have a class near you I highly recommend adding it to your exercise routine.

As you have probably noticed, I continue to play around with the format of the new site along with trying to find all of the broken links and missing photos.  This week I also updated the Resources page to reflect the merger of Parkinson’s Disease Foundation (PDF) and the National Parkinson’s Foundation (NPF) in to Parkinson’s Foundation. I  added a new resource website about hallucinations and delusions caused by PD.  The site is called more to parkinson’s  and is sponsored by Acadia Pharmaceuticals.   

In case I don’t produce another post this year, I will take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Holidays!!  We hope 2018 will be a year of Peace, Joy, Good Health and Good will for us all.