…and all I kept thinking was "thank God Jim Doyle got re-elected."

Last week, Wisconsin was ground zero in the political fight for embryonic stem cell research — the research that holds promise for a cure for this horrible disease.

Parkinson's disease breaks the connections between the brain and the body.  It traps people in their own bodies.  It doesn't affect the mind but the body doesn't react.  Words can't be formed.  To suffer from Parkinson's is to be trapped in a body that doesn't do what you want it to do.

"What a nice couple," I thought as I left their house.  They've been married for over 50 years.  He was a deputy before being struck with the disease and now she is his caretaker.

I was making a sales call (for what is irrelevant to this story).  Usually it takes about 90 minutes for my presentation.  For the first half hour the man sat mostly silent, content to listen.  His nose was running and he dabbed it with a tissue every couple of minutes.  The wife explained that he had Parkinson's Disease and that's why he was in a wheel chair and wasn't speaking.  He attempted a few questions but it was clearly a struggle for him to form words.  About 15 minutes later he had to rest and his wife wheeled him to the living room and spent the next 5 minutes helping to get him into his recliner.

Then he took his medicine.

I continued my presentation to the wife and as I was wrapping up I heard the husband call to his wife.  This didn't seem to be the same inarticulate man I had been pitching just a few moments earlier.  This was a man who was fully forming words.  He was speaking.

"The medicine must have started working," the wife said.

She went in and talked to him and then returned almost looking relieved.  A few moments later the man walked past.  Let me repeat that.  He WALKED past.  The same man who had been wheel chair bound just an hour earlier got up, walked past us and up a half flight of stairs by himself.

In the other room they were conferring on whether to go ahead with my proposal.  What struck me the most is that he was talking.  He was asking questions.  He was part of the conversation.  It was as though some miracle was bestowed upon him to give him back the power of speech and mobility.  The medicine had worked.

I came in to see him.  He was relaxing on his recliner but was twitching uncontrollably.  It reminded me of the twitching that actor Michael J. Fox had when he cut the campaign commercials for Governor Jim Doyle.  Talk show host Rush Limbaugh accused Fox of acting and intentionally twitching for the camera.  What I was seeing in front of me was no show.  This man was twitching uncontrollably but he had his faculties.  He had regained his speech if only for the duration of the medicine which he had taken.

Here was a deputy, I thought — a man who relied upon his physical strength and authority to do his job.  He had been struck with a disease which robbed him of his ability to do the job he loved and found himself a prisoner of his own body.

As I was leaving I thanked them for their business.  He smiled and said, "It looks like a great product.  We're looking forward to it."  I was glad I was able to help them.  I had given them the best price I could and I knew that they would be thrilled, but I also felt honored and enriched by having had the opportunity to meet this couple — to understand their struggle and to be given the opportunity to understand how this disease ravages the human body.

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Link: National Parkinson's Foundation