It is Not a Death Sentence!

I don't often think of my own death (who really wants to), but when I do, I often think of a sentence I have uttered a thousand times:  "Nobody gets out of life alive".  It's true, isn't it?  I, like all of you reading this, will die someday, hopefully of old age, while I'm sleeping.  However, there's one thing I am not going to die of...

Parkinson's disease.

Why?  Because it's NOT a fatal disease, that's why.  If my tone sounds a bit like I'm annoyed, or a little angry, that's because I am.  I have been amazed at the amount of articles that say "so and so died today after a long battle with Parkinson's disease", implying or directly saying that this person died of Parkinson's.  

If you conduct a Google search on "Is Parkinson's fatal?", you come up with some interesting stuff, some of which is benign, and some of which is rather negative.  None of them say the disease is fatal, and neither does my neurologist!

From http://www.pdf.org:

The progression of Parkinson’s disease varies among different individuals.  Parkinson's is chronic and slowly progressive, meaning that symptoms continue and worsen over a period of years.  Parkinson's is not considered a fatal disease. And the way that it progresses it different for everyone:

From https://www.michaeljfox.org, one of the best sites out there:

Most doctors say that Parkinson’s disease itself is not fatal. You die with Parkinson's disease, not from it. However, as symptoms worsen they can cause incidents that result in death. For example, in advanced cases, difficulty swallowing can cause Parkinson’s patients to aspirate food into the lungs, leading to pneumonia or other pulmonary conditions. Loss of balance can cause falls that result in serious injuries or death. The seriousness of these incidents depends greatly on the patient's age, overall health and disease stage.

Then there's some website called http://wiki.answers.com, which responds to the question this way:

no, but at a certain stage in the disease, the quality of life of the person with the disease is almost nothing.

Really?  That's it?  They might as well have written in the next sentence, "Find the nearest bridge and jump, you loser!"

I'll give you a wiki answer.  Screw you!

Here is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.  Dave Jennings was a terrific punter for both the New York Giants and Jets from 1974 - 1987 (I am a Giants fan), and was a Jets broadcaster for two decades, and he recently died while suffering from Parkinson's disease.  I looked through his various obituaries, and nearly all of them implied or said that he died of Parkinson's.  This one, from www.sbnation.com, drove me crazy:

The former Giants punter and long-time broadcaster lost his battle with Parkinson's disease on Wednesday. He was 61 years old.

Sigh.  That was the only response I could muster because it was so ridiculous.  

These various headlines made me have to re-explain to my wife that this disease is not fatal, and it is prompting me to explain it to all of you.  I will probably have to do this for the rest of my life.  Oh well.  I could be worse, I suppose.  I could have a disease that actually IS fatal.  

Thanks for reading my rant.  I needed to vent.  Coming next:  It Seems So Obvious Now, Part 2.

Matthew 19:26