Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative condition clinically identified by the hallmark features of shaking, stiffness and slowness. PD is also marked by a multitude of non-motor symptoms like constipation, cognitive changes and sleep disorders. Any number of symptoms and intensities can exist in each patient, leading to a remarkably heterogenous patient population. While effective symptomatic treatments exist, the only known means of quantitatively slowing progression to date is exercise, specifically cardiovascular exercise that increases heart rate (1).
Read moreThe War for Gloria by Atticus Lish
The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish
Fiction has the ability to bring a world to life, to offer other viewpoints and ways of looking at the world, and it also has the ability to put us in another body in order to give us the experience of a disease or condition. In Atticus Lish’s excellent new novel The War for Gloria (Knopf, 2021), the disease is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The story is told from the perspectives of Gloria and her son Corey, who is a young teenager when Gloria is diagnosed with ALS. Lish, whose novel Preparation for the Next Life won the 2015 Pen/Faulkner Award, brings to life the world of working class Boston suburbs.