David J. LeMaster
Introduction I won’t name names and titles, but my brief depression over having Parkinson’s was caused by a book. I waited for two weeks for a book to arrive from Amazon.com, one of those Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask things, written by a layperson just like me, someone who had the disease and wanted to share personal experience. I tore into the book with my usual flair and enthusiasm. True, I’d just been diagnosed with an incurable, degenerative disease, but I had goals. I always wanted to be a professional writer, so as the disease took its toll, I reasoned, I’d have more and more time to write. I’d focus myself on that novel that never quite got completed, or on that half-written project from years ago. The book told about the disease and its symptoms. It mentioned the stages and how it progressed. I began to understand the subtleties of the disease. But then the writer said something like this: You had goals before.