Hi everyone,
Eileen Werndorfer doesn’t want your pity.
But she’ll take your $20 in the name of Parkinson’s research.
After seven years of fighting the degenerative neurological disorder, the Brookfield woman refuses to take Parkinson’s lying down.
Except for the first 45 minutes or so after she wakes up.
“I can’t walk in the morning until after I take my medicine,” Werndorfer said with a grin. “But once it kicks in, it’s like Superman. It’s like you go into a phone booth and come out a different person.”
This is the Parkinson’s picture that Werndorfer and her husband, Steve, want to paint for the world, not the old canvas of body tremors that hangs in too many minds.
Although some folks with Parkinson’s have visible body tremors accompanied by stiffness, other people manage the disease with medicine and exercise.
The 61-year-old Werndorfer understands it takes money — a lot of money — to punch back against Parkinson’s the way that Muhammad Ali, Michael J. Fox, Janet Reno and the Rev. Billy Graham do.
So for the past four years, Werndorfer has decided to do something about it.
To find out what, check out my “Take on Life” column on Sunday.
Only in the print edition of The News-Times.
