- This GN is this year’s Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli
- The Language of PD
- The Spandex Angel
- One Order of No Vomit Coming Up
- I Hate Running
I could call this review any of the above and a hundred other things. Such as, “I tried not to cry as I was reading as I was at work and it reminded me of my friends who passed from complications of the disease (and one of whom also had complications from Alzheimer’s).” I could say the author of My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson’s (Peter Dunlap-Shohl) makes it look fun (and call this The Fun of PD), but it is far from that. And I just watched people I cared about going through it and read about someone going through it. I cannot imagine what anyone went/is going through. Therefore, this is not for someone who is raw from the disease themselves or a family member or a friend or a caregiver or anyone who is sensitive to such things.
This is an emotional read. To say the least. Dunlap-Shohl gives us his journey in a simple, straight forward manner, but we are getting the complexity of things as well. We learn how medications work (or don’t), how specific types of exercise works (and though it helps, he still hates running), the language that is used to explain certain types of actions such as walking (one that would fit right in with the Ministry of Funny Walks) and how when ordering a certain pill, you are asking for “No Vomit” please. There is the Spandex Angel (his “Sylvester Stallone meets John Travolta 1970s era” pep talker) who starts his journey out of self-pity And all of that is before Chapter 3. 
We then get to Chapter 3 and the interview with the disease. I knew that it was not going to be easy and I appreciated the humor countering the seriousness. But even with the humor, things go deep (sometimes things are darkly funny). And while the artwork helps counter this with the actual humor (though some of the commentary by the narrator is funny) we still get a punch in the gut. Such as showing Parkinson’s as a dapper, oddly shaped/looking person the author/patient interviews. Around page 30 we get the lowdown of more symptoms, issues, history and even a false hope for cures from Parkinson’s themselves. Here I “walked away.” I stopped reading. I will finish it, eventually, but at that point… Please read this, if you can. Maybe some day (after I finish it) we can talk about it.
The version I read via an online reader copy is due April 2025. However, there does seem to be a book from 2015 that is out of print. I think this book will stay with me like Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli did a few years ago.