p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n
Why this column stuck with me:<\/b> I chose \u201cI\u2019m Fighting Parkinson\u2019s One Punch At A Time\u201d because it was a story that took four years to write but one that has resonated immediately and endlessly.<\/p>\n
When I was diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s disease in the winter of 2021, I decided to keep the diagnosis a secret. Initially I didn\u2019t even tell my own three children. I didn\u2019t want people feeling sorry for me, or looking at me differently or, worse, treating me differently. I wanted to continue with my normal life while fighting the disease in private.<\/p>\n
As part of this fight, I attended a boxing class for Parkinson\u2019s patients. The class was filled with 80-year-old women pounding on a heavy bag, 75-year-old men dancing across the floor, elderly and trembling people working hard to stave off the effects of PD. They quickly became my heroes, and deserved to be illuminated as inspirations to others. I finally realized that I could tell their story and maybe push others to come out of the PD shadows and seek the same therapy.<\/p>\n
And, well, if I was going to write about others with Parkinson\u2019s disease, I would have to come clean about myself. So, with help from boxing instructor Jody Hould and sports editor Iliana Lim\u00f3n Romero, I did. And I\u2019m glad I did. I\u2019ve since heard from countless people that the story moved them to admit their illness and begin boxing therapy or other types of PD workouts. My diagnosis was a punch in the gut. But thanks in part to the encouragement that came from this story, I\u2019m fighting back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> Why this column stuck with me: I chose \u201cI\u2019m Fighting Parkinson\u2019s One Punch At A Time\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":464344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[591,1582,276,2563,19635,2442,128689,2961,2252,224,2444,5337,6291,26027,9323,645,3007,211500,11459,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-464343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-career","12":"tag-disease","13":"tag-dodgers","14":"tag-fan-base","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-life","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-times","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-other","21":"tag-parkinson","22":"tag-player","23":"tag-story","24":"tag-team","25":"tag-ticket-price","26":"tag-woman","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115763254739647850","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}