Page created by: Holly Thompson

My Dad, Mark Thompson was diagnosed in 2017 with Parkinson's disease after feeling weeks of feeling stiff and the uneasiness in his hands (later discovered to be tremors) as well as difficulty sleeping. My father his whole life has been active and a hard worker, he's raised 4 four children and has made our lives incredible. The diagnosis came as a shock and my first thought was how could this happen to him? why has it happened to him? oddly enough we where also so thankful that his diagnosis was Parkinson's (in which sounds absurd, but in comparison to other diseases in which where on the radar MS, Parkinson's was what we where rooting for). Before the diagnosis my mum, and my siblings all noticed my Dad was not himself, but we struggled to pin point what is could be so we ended up just shrugging it off so did my Dad for many months. When the diagnosis came about it all made sense. The first few months where the hardest, none of us knew what Parkinson's was or what it meant for us as a family. Small things became apparent, and we began to notice that my Dads decision making was very slow, as well as his movement and tremors also evolved. The months before my Dad was able to control his symptoms through medication where the hardest, he had no control over what was happening but he now understood why it was happening I think this was the most frustrating point for him. The first week my Dad began his medication I noticed a drastic change in who he was, he still has down days, we all do, but due to the incredible work/research done by the people at organisations such as the Michael J Fox Foundation etc, my dads life would be incredibly different to what is is today.