My name is Dennis Smith, born 10 March 1946 (bloody old eh?). I have a wonderful wife, Irene, two married sons, and two grand children, Daniel and Lara. I live in Canberra the Capital of Australia.

I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in May 1999 while working as a Personnel Consultant in Canberra finding contract positions for IT Consultants. This diagnosis came out of the blue and was as big a shock to my General Practitioner as it was to me and my family. Prior to this diagnosis I had been having difficulty handling the pressures of the job and was disorganised and couldn’t concentrate. These problems were more noticeable to me than the fact that my left arm wasn’t swinging and I was making an extraordinary lot of errors using the keyboard.

Luckily I had an Income Protection Policy with Tower Australia Limited and was able to take full advantage of this by retiring from my job in November 2000 on quite a reasonable monthly payment. This has made coping with Parkinson’s Disease much less stressful than it may otherwise have been.

I contacted Parkinson’s ACT Inc, the Canberra Support Group for PD, telling them that I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone with PD and was only interested in seeing what documentation they had. They were very understanding and helpful. Twelve months later I contacted them again offering to help in any way that I could, and ended up as the Treasurer of that Organisation. This was about October 2001 and I continued as Treasurer until about Sep 2003 when my wife and I did a Seachange and moved to Merimbula on the South Coast of NSW. We returned to Canberra in July 2006 and I am now currently President of Parkinson’s ACT Inc.

The Parknson’s disease has progressed significantly over this time and is now having quite an impact on my quality of life. Luckily my family and friends are very supportive which helps a lot.

At this point in time (May 2009) my symptoms include slowness of thought and movement - as my medication wears off I notice that my brain seems to slow down and then my body follows. I do evrything in slow motion and everything becomes difficult to do - tying shoe laces, doing up buttons, cleaning teeth, etc - normal everyday tasks are not easily handled. Another thing I notice as my medications wears off is that I feel like I am made out of lead and my arms and legs feel heavy and don’t want to move.

Also I suffer from freezing, not the cold type, but the not able to take a step type. The signals from my brain to my legs just don’t get the distance and I am frozen to the ground. There are a number of techniques I can use to try and get started and most times ones of these will get me going into a Parkinson’s Shuffle.

It must be pointed out that when my medication is working properly all my symptoms are very mild and most people wouldn’t realise that I have the disease.

Well that’s the bad part of my story and now for the good part.

In early 2005 I discovered a previously hidden ability to write rhyming poetry and since that time have self-published two poetry books, “Out of My Mind” and “Further Out of My Mind”. The first book containing over 100 poems and the second exactly 100 poems. I am welll on my way to my third book with 74 new poems written. I believe that PD has switched something on in my brain to provide me with this new skill. Thanks PD.

I have also invented what I call Parkinson’s Photography, what you do when you can’t hold your camera steady – I have sold many of my photos and recently had an exhibition at the National Convention Centre which was extended from 4 weeks to 6 weeks due to public demand. Go to Page "Parkinson’s Photography" to view some of my work.