How I learned to live positively with YOPD

If you or a loved one have just been diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson’s disease, you might be thinking, Is my life over? What does the future look like? How will I cope?

When serial entrepreneur and lifelong optimist Blake was first diagnosed with YOPD at age forty-seven, he was beyond devastated. Sucker-punched by the news, he first tries to block it out. But what follows is an uncontrolled tailspin into heartbreak, depression and despair.

Yet as he becomes increasingly proactive, trawling the internet for answers and learning everything he possibly can about the disease, Blake’s initial denial gives way to grief, then acceptance.

He begins to find the right words to tell friends and family—and soon gains an even wider support circle via the World Parkinson's Congress, a fortuitously-timed conference which gives him “hope from all angles” and catapults him into a new chapter of positive action.

Slowly rediscovering his old spirit, he throws himself into researching drugs, "doctor shopping," boxing classes for Parkinson's patients and occasionally standing on one leg (don't ask).

Enrolling himself in clinical research trials and novel treatment programs, he also finds a whole new avenue for optimism: the future of Parkinson's research is bright.

Half-memoir, half self-help book, "You Have Young Onset Parkinson's" is a refreshingly honest account of what life with YOPD is really like, and an invitation to the reader—not to be defined by Parkinson's, but to live fully in spite of it.