Beware of the Converted
2019 Rock Steady Boxing Class
Parkinson's Disease (or, as I call him, Mr. PD) is a topic that I can write about with some degree of authority and I'm going into this project believing that sharing my experiences will benefit someone out there in 2019. Many tangible benefits have come my way because I was open to learning something new from someone else. There's got to be others with the same attitude.
One such learning experience happened to me in October 2018 when a visiting pastor, Rob Weingartner, introduced himself in an unusual way. "I understand we have something in common", Rob told me with assurance. It caught me off-guard and I really had no idea what the commonality might be. "We both have Parkinson's". It wasn't apparent to me that Rob was a fellow sufferer, because I'd only seen him from a distance in the pulpit and even upon meeting him up close, I still didn't readily identify his symptoms.
We quickly drifted into the usual talk of the most troubling aspects of Mr. PD and Rob began to praise the positive results he was seeing on his tremors from Rock Steady Boxing classes at a gym in Nashville, TN. We exchanged emails and he followed through by suggesting I watch a CBS report by Lesley Stahl on Rock Steady. I was immediately hooked and what's more, Rob had found that there was a Rock Steady class in my area! To my amazement, it was only a 30 minute drive from Greenwood and one of only about 40 certified affiliates in the entire U.S. More than mere coincidence, to me.
A day after Rob's email, I visited the gym and met the Rock Steady Boxing instructor, Matt Howell. Before I left the facility, I'd signed up, bought boxing gloves and paid for a year of classes, in advance! Over the first 3 months, my enthusiasm has not waned one iota. Classes are twice a week for an hour and the only two I've missed were when my wife had surgery in Jackson. Positive results are coming my way and I will write more specifically on those later.
Anyone (I do mean, ANYONE) that watches the CBS report by Lesley Stahl will be motivated by the researcher's findings stated at 7:09 in the video. Motivated to take action, motivated to seek out more information, motivated to call me out for exaggeration....but definitely not complacent or indifferent! To me, those words were crystal clear messages of hope. And with that hope came my sense of urgency to do something to fight back against Mr. PD.
Here is the video (at left) that Rob shared with me. I hope it will reach someone else who will want to receive its empowering message and pass it to others.
Richard Beattie
January 26, 2019
Greenwood, Mississippi
