Nine years ago, Linda Davis noticed she’d picked up an odd trait.

When she walked, her left arm didn’t swing back and forth. It hung by her side, straight.

After a while, her left hand started trembling.

“That’s when my mother said, ‘You need to see a neurologist,'” Davis said, recalling the events leading up to her being diagnosed with Parkinson disease, a brain disorder that is diagnosed in about 60,000 Americans annually.

At the neurologist’s office, Davis’ doctor asked her to tap her right foot. She did, no problem.

Asked to tap her left foot, she couldn’t. Clearly, something wasn’t right.

“When I got the diagnosis,” she said, “I thought to myself, ‘OK, now that I know what it is, I’ll deal with it.'”

She did. And she didn’t.

“For two or three years, no one knew because you couldn’t tell,” she said. “When I told people I had Parkinson disease, they’d look at me and say, ‘You do?'”

She avoided meetings of the Lawrence Parkinson Support Group.

“I was like the ostrich with its head in the sand,” Davis said. “I didn’t want to see the future.”

Members of the Lawrence Parkinson Support Group meet to discuss some upcoming events. At center, reflected in a mirror, is group President Linda Davis.

Parkinson disease is progressive. Its symptoms – shaking, rigidity, loss of balance, shuffling walk, muffled speech – can be slowed with medication, but they can’t be stopped. As yet, there is no cure.

Today, Davis’ symptoms are noticeable.

“I’m in my turtle mode this morning,” she said last week, meaning she was experiencing more rigidity than usual. Her gait is shuffling, her hands didn’t always do what she wanted them to.

“I’m not in my Baryshnikov mode yet,” said Davis, always ready with a wisecrack.

She’s wearing a bright pink top that reads, “When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.”

Davis’ husband, Bob, is play-by-play announcer for the Kansas City Royals and for Kansas University football and basketball games.

Support group

Linda Davis’ head is no longer in the sand. She started attending Lawrence Parkinson Support Group meetings in 2002.

“We help each other out,” she said. “It’s amazing what you can learn when you’re in a group like this.”

Recently elected president of the Lawrence Parkinson Support Group, Davis is intent on implementing the group’s goal of putting informational packets in every doctor’s office and nurses’ station in Lawrence.

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The group also is looking for speakers for its monthly meetings, which are open to anyone with Parkinson as well as their caregivers. At last count, the group had 67 names on its roster.

“On average, we get between 30 and 40 people at each meeting,” Davis said.

A caregiver

Though she doesn’t have Parkinson disease, Mary Elizabeth Debicki rarely misses a meeting.

“I was a caregiver,” Debicki said. “My mother had Parkinson’s before she died.”

She preaches patience.

“I’m embarrassed to say it, but there were times I lost my patience with my dear, wonderful mother,” Debicki said. “What I Iearned from the going to the meetings was that as a caregiver, you have to realize you’re dealing with the symptoms, not the person – it’s not the person who’s being uncooperative, it’s the disease, the symptoms.”

The meetings are not dreary affairs.

“We laugh about things that others would be nervous about,” said Dr. Don Penny, who learned he had Parkinson in 1989. He moved from Denver to Lawrence a year ago.

“Some people refer to themselves as holy rollers,” he said, chuckling. (As president, Davis calls herself a “mover and shaker.”)

Penny said he hopes to eventually start a speakers bureau.

“We’d like people to understand that we are not asking to be pitied,” Penny said. “We are not succumbing to this disease.”

Also, the group doesn’t shy away from its support of stem-cell research. But it’s only one of many avenues for potential cures, Penny said.

“I do feel like there’s a cure coming,” Penny said. “It may not come in my lifetime and it may be in form of arresting the symptoms’ development, but it’s coming.”