PD.002 — Parkinson: The Rest Not Yet.

The diagnosis has already been written. The rest hasn’t been yet. I’m writing to you—the newcomers. Those of you who left the doctor’s office with a new name and the same body as always, without understanding how both things can be true at the same time. Those of you who haven’t told anyone yet, because saying it out loud makes it seem real. Those of you who are going to ask the AI tonight what you didn’t dare ask the doctor.

I was there. I remember the day, not the doctor. I went in alone; it was quick, cold, and visceral. He prescribed me Sinemet, said he was sorry, and told me to come back in six months. I went out to the waiting room and my father was waiting for me. Well, he didn't tell me I have Parkinson's, the son of a bitch, I told him. This guy's an asshole. Come on, let's go get a beer, my father replied.

Over time, a rigid arm and leg, arm swing and Robocop stride. I went from moving in MP4 to living in GIF. And some days with an almost token presence.

No one came to tell me. And since no one wrote me this letter back then, I'm writing it to you now.

The Spoiler

I’m going to give you a real spoiler, so you don’t go in blind: you’re going to get beaten to a pulp—even on your ID card. It’s rough. Really rough. I’m not going to try to convince you that illness is a gift or a lesson—anyone who tells you that has never woken up crying at three in the morning, with the day not even started yet and sadness already setting in, and your dick tucked away, too scared to peek out. That happens.

It happens that your voice won't come out. You say "good morning" and Chewbacca comes out instead. You're terrified of getting stuck in the middle of the street, as if your feet were stuck in reinforced concrete, surrounded by people who don't know what they're seeing. It’s just that gestures that used to come naturally now come at a price, and almost no one around you is going to understand that starting the day can be so hard.

You're going to have a hell of a time for a while. Everyone has to take their own. Three months, six, two years. Cry. Bang your heads against the wall. Curse everything. But even this changes. The good thing about Parkinson's is that it doesn't kill you. The bad thing is that it forces you to meet a version of yourself no one introduced you to.

The Other Half

Because here comes the other half of the spoiler: you still have so much life ahead of you. And that part is almost never written about. There will be days when your body doesn’t cooperate, and yet you’ll laugh harder than ever. You’ll become very observant: things you never even noticed before will take your breath away—a dog, a gesture, a sunrise.

People who show up just when you thought there was no one left, and people who fall off the list without you having to cross them out: the disease does that cleaning for free—how damn efficient it is. Thanks, sweetheart. You’re going to cry at the most absurd moments and burst out laughing at the worst possible time, because the body needs to laugh even if the script says otherwise.

Nothing is filtered out: you’ll feel it all with the volume turned up. The good stuff, too. And the good stuff—mark my words—wins more often than you’d think possible today.

You can still

Your new body forces you to negotiate with life in a different way. And in that negotiation, you’ll discover that you can still fuck (even if it’s slower, more creative, and much more present). That you can still write (even if you dictate, even if your hand trembles). That you can still laugh (and when you do, it will be a deeper laugh, because you know how hard it is to let it out).

Keep busy; don’t worry. Find a passion: something that moves you and ignites you. Intensity. And work out. Not because it’s going to cure you. Work out because the body responds differently to those who still force it to move. Don’t make things easy for it. Get strong for your loved ones, too. They get a little sick, too. Only they don’t have levodopa for their fear.

It's not a name

Desire cannot be performed. Affection cannot be prescribed. Remaining a person does not require informed consent. All of that still belongs to you. Don’t let anyone—not a doctor, not a scale, not a pitying glance—make you doubt it. Because from day one, the illness will try to do one thing, and this is the only battle I ask you not to lose: it will try to turn you into a label. Patient. Sick person. Clinical case.

Names are convenient for everyone except the person who has to live with them. Little by little, conversations will begin to revolve around symptoms, pills, and losses, and one day you’ll notice that people are looking at you through the lens of your illness, as if through a dirty window. Don’t let that happen. You are not a disease with a person inside. You’re not learning to live with Parkinson’s. You’re learning to live in a new body. And that’s not the same thing.

Life is lived in conjugation

You are not a noun. We people live in verbs—sleeping, training, creating, helping, desiring, celebrating, continuing—and as long as you have verbs left, and you are going to have many more than you think today, the illness only has a noun. You cannot live with a noun.

A diagnosis needs a name. Life doesn’t. Life is lived in the present tense. A bad day will be followed by a good one. It’s a lived reality, and I can vouch for it. Live it with compassion and passion—that’s what my dear neurologist and friend Manolo told me, and in all these years I haven’t found a better way to put it. Compassion for the body when it falls short. Passion for everything else.

The diagnosis has already been written.
The rest not yet.