Our Parkinson’s Support Group here in Albert Lea is celebrating our one-year anniversary. We organized a year ago, and it has been a wonderful year of making many new friends, of learning much from one another as well as from the excellent programs we have been able to bring into our group. Our goal is to learn to live well with Parkinson’s. There are multiple organizations to offer help, and for the most part Parkinson’s people as individuals have found a way to live each day to the fullest. They may have had physical setbacks but they refuse to let these become unbearable burdens. The people we have met in our group are very active people. They garden, play golf, bowl, exercise (which is very important for Parkinson’s people, to stay active), and to the best of their ability do all the things they have always done.

Our January meeting will be held Jan. 24 at 9:30 a.m. at the Albert Lea Senior Center. The program this month will be on depression as depression can be a part of the Parkinson’s diagnoses. However, it can be managed and Dr. Karen Gosen, psychiatrist with the Mayo Clinic Health System Albert Lea, will be speaking to us and helping us to understand how to deal with this part of the Parkinson’s disease. In February we will be having a program on deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease with a Mayo Clinic doctor as our presenter. Deep brain stimulation is an FDA-approved surgical treatment for Parkinson’s disease. It is neurostimulator(s) implanted near the collar, sometimes called a “brain pacemaker.”

Please join us if you have Parkinson’s or if you know someone who has it. We welcome you!

 

Maureen Ruble

Albert Lea