Feeling Sorry for Myself

I, John Pepper, felt so sorry for myself, when I was diagnosed in 1992, that I gave up my position, as Chairman (President) of a large printing company, which my wife and I had fouded in 1970, and stayed at home, feeling sorry for myself, for two years. The only thing I did was to take my medication, go to the gym every day, for ninety minutes, and then sit and read a book and listen to classical music, all day.

You don't need to be told that I often spent more time sleeping, than I did reading. In fact,

I turned day into night.

I could not sleep more than three hours a night. This made me turn my light on, every night, when I could not sleep, thus disturbing my wife's sleep. She had selflessly told me to do this, when I could not sleep, as she did not want me getting up and reading in another room. She preferred to have me close to her, so that if anything went wrong, she would know about it.

After two years, I decided that

I could not carry on in this way.

I had to take some action. Instead of reading my book, I thought about my condition and my reaction to it. I realised that

I had always been a positive, highly motivated person,

but I had become just the opposite. I had become

negative and totally demotivated.

This had not happened in the previous two years, nor even in the previous ten years, it had happened at about the time that I was diagnosed with chronic depression. None of us knows that we are in depression. Others know it, but we don't. We know when we feel depressed, but that is not the same thing. Everybody feels depressed, on occasions, but they normally snap out of it. Nobody feels highly elated all the time; they also snap out of that fairly quickly.

In my business, when things went wrong,

I used to analyse the situation and decide on a course of action.

Why had I not done this with my Parkinson's? The only reason could have been that I had been told, by my neurologist, that

Parkinson's is a progressive neurological condition, for which there is no cure, and for which we can do nothing!

What is the sense in fighting, if there is nothing we can do about it?

The first thing I did was to stop going to the gym every day. This was because my performance was getting noticeably worse, all the time. Not only did this depress me, it made all that effort appear to be a waste of time! Every month, I had had to reduce the amount of weight I was setting on each machine, and the resistance I was setting on the treadmill and bicycle.

I was getting nowhere fast!

When I told my wife (Shirley) that I had stopped going to the gym she was very upset, because it was the only exercise I did at all. She had been going to 'Run/Walk for Life' for the previous two years and her physical condition had improved so much that she was very enthusiatic about it. She wanted me to try it. She twisted my arm and rather than do nothing, I agreed to walk, three times a week. I had been doing twenty minutes on the treadmill, twenty minutes on a bicycle and twenty minutes on a step-climbing machine, every day, six days a week. What could walking for fifteen minutes, three tmes a week, do for me?

That was one of those times when I was glad I was wrong!

I had to start walking for fifteen minutes every second day. After two weeks, I was allowed to increase it to twenty minutes. Then, every second week, I was allowed to walk another five minutes longer. At the beginning, I was able to walk for one kilometre in over ten minutes. That was about one mile in about seventeen minutes. That was not very good, but it was not all that bad either. After three months, when I was walking for forty minutes each time, and I had improved to less than nine minutes a kilometre, I knew my condition was improving!

    To my amazement, I not only found that I had increased my distance, which did not surprise me, but I had also significantly improved my times.

THAT WAS THE TURNING POINT IN THE PROGRESSION OF MY

PARKINSON'S DISEASE!

You have no idea what effect that had on my mental state!

The Neurologist was WRONG!

There is a lot you can do to change the progression of your

Parkinson's Disease!

That was when I started to feel positive about myself!

 If you are feeling sorry for yourself, then start to change that situation into one where you have a positive attitude!

That will not happen unless you believe that it CAN HAPPEN!

1. If you do not do any exercise, then start to walk, as fast as YOU CAN, for as little as one minute.

2. if you are able to do more than that, then don't do more than ten minutes.

3. Make a note, in a diary, of how far you walked in that period of time, and what the time was.

4. Repeat your walk three times that week and again the next week, leaving at least one day in between walks!.

5. Increase your time by five minutes every second week, if you were walking for ten minutes or by as much as you can, if you started at less than ten minutes.

6. Keep increasing the time every second week.

7. You will notice, if you have been keeping a proper note of your distance, that the distance has increased or the time has reduced, since you started at that time. If you don't know how far you have walked, then take a drive in your car and measure the distance.

8. That improvement will start you to become more positive about yourself and your future.

9. Don't walk for more than one hour and don't walk for more than three times a week.

If you over-exercise, you will do more harm than good!

Read all about exercise on this website - www.reverseparkinsons.net, or better still, puchase a copy of my book, and read all about what else you can do about improving your condition!

GOOD LUCK!