My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2009. It was a shock. I didn’t really know what it was except that it gave people the shakes. I soon learnt that it was so much more. Over the next few years we watched as Parkinson’s slowly but surely took control of Dad. We watched on as he started to not be able to make his hands do what he wanted them to on the TV remote, as he began shuffling because he couldn’t pick his feet up properly anymore, as his memory started to fade, as he became depressed and in his final days when he lay in his hospital bed in the front room at Mum’s place, as the Dementia took hold and he was off down to the pub that he apparently owned (not sure if that was the Dementia or possibly a life long dream). We watched as Dad went from being Dad, a person that you go to for advice, to look after you because he’s your dad, to an old man that I very suddenly had to look after and barely recognised. Parkinson’s so much more than just the shakes.