I was diagnosed when I was 43 years old, in 2002.
Which was a horrible moment because I didn't know anything about Parkinson's except that it was bad.
The doctor told me it was incurable, progressive and disabling.
Which is not three things you want to hear when you're forty three.
I'm Peter Dunlap-Shohl and I'm a cartoonist.
Some people today think Peter's drawing is quirky and weird. and it is quirky and weird.
But it's interesting, and it's always fresh. And he's been bringing that fresh perspective for forty years.
For him it was a lifelong dream, he couldn't help himself. I mean he was cartooning since he was in grade school.
Peter was trying really hard to get his resumes out to all these different papers, And just getting rejection letter after rejection letter.
He wasn't really eager to back to Alaska at that point.
He did something a little different from his other resumes, he wrote to the editor of The Anchorage Daily News in cartoon form.
At the end of the 70's and the early 80's, we had this amazing newspaper war going on.
There were two, important newspapers. The old Anchorage Times was the established, well to do, looked unbeatable
And The Anchorage Daily News was the upstart.
We were trying to be fresh and inspiring and different and man, Peter had that.
My boss, the executive editor, he looked at them and said these are great we should get this guy and I said yeah I think so too!
I told Peter, Go! you know this is your foot in the door.
There was a great spirit at The Daily News then.
People were allowed to experiment and fail and if you failed it wasn't the end of the world it was just a learning experience.
Over the years, he became astonishingly productive he's do four editorials a week.
The politicians they were being lanced by Peter every day. Most of them kind of enjoyed it.
A lot of times, they would call and say hey! can I get a copy of that cartoon?
They figured if I'm important enough to get Peter Dunlap-Shohl's attention then I must be doing something right.
I felt like it was...oh shoot...
Sorry.
I have to take a pill.
Primarily, I Identified myself as a cartoonist.
One of the things I was worried about was that Parkinson's would take that away from me.
Parkinson's it's symptoms are so universal.
It screws up your ability to swallow, to talk, to move normally, to stand up straight.
To do, just pretty much anything.
And I didn't want to be remembered as somebody in the bed, incapable of turning over, with bed sores and stuff like that.
I was thinking of, doing myself in. I thought it would be good to run out to the park and get eaten by bears.
Because it would be a clean way to go. Good for my family too because they wouldn't have to watch me fall apart.
My wife was not on board with that at all. "You're not allowed to do that" she said.
Our son.
I know would've been devistated.
Devastation doesn't even touch on what it would do to my mental health.
To my mental health.
When Peter, drew a comic about thinking of suicide, for me my bacground is like. *gasp.
But for him, I think it's a way he protects himself.
It would've been a horrible mistake, if I carried on with that plan. Because I've had a great run since then.
I had some bad drawing habits that were exasperated by Parkinson's.
I would lean my head over too far and it would generate this incredible pain in my back. It got to the point where I couldn't draw anymore.
My doctor said there's nothing I can do for you.
And I said what if I was to sit at a computer with a pad and replicate the way a person does when they type.
He said that'll work. It also brought me to the world of computers and I became inspired.
There was so much I could do. Color, animations and sound. That was a very liberating thing for me.
I published a novel called My Degeneration in 2015. And it was about Parkinsons.
My idea was that it would be a tool for people who were freaked out like I was. And needed information.
Because that is, the most powerful tool you have.
Not only did he help himself but he helped a lot of people.
Especially in their early diagnoses.
I thought Parkinson's would be one of the worst things in the world that could happen to me.
But as it turns out, I was able to do things that I never would have done.
It's impossible to read the future, so don't discount your chances.