Red light district

On a brisk winter morning last year, Ron Till, 67, sat down at his small kitchen table in Adelaide, Australia, to read the latest edition of his quarterly newsletter from an organization called Parkinson’s South Australia.

Till had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in his late 50s, and his symptoms were getting worse. He had difficulty concentrating, had lost his peripheral vision and could only manage a limited amount of activity each day before exhaustion overwhelmed him.

Since he had retired two years earlier, Till had spent much of his time sitting inside his brick apartment, staring out the window, feeling lonely and bored.

“Parkinson’s makes you lose your confidence,”Till says. “You think, ‘Everybody’s looking at my hands shaking.’You become more introverted.”

On top of his medical woes, Till and his wife had recently separated. “It became intolerable for her,”Till explained.

“When I retired, my wife thought I’d be doing lots of things like volunteering and visiting friends, but I never did any of that. Parkinson’s made me so tired. I could do one thing, and then the rest of the day I was useless.”

Fortunately for Till, as he sipped his coffee and read the Parkinson’s South Australia newsletter that morning, he came across an advertisement that would change his life.

Shedding light on the “shaking palsy”

Parkinson’s disease—first described by English surgeon James Parkinson in his 1817 paper“An Essay on the Shaking Palsy” —is a movement disorder involving tremor, muscle rigidity, impaired balance and slowness of movement. It can also cause neurological problems such as depression, poor sleep, memory loss and confusion.