Editor’s Note: Barbara Salsberg Mathews is an advocate for living well with Parkinson's disease — especially through art and dance. She was recently the recipient of a grant from Parkinson Canada to fund her production of a free video series based on her "Mime over Mind" project, that uses mime as a therapeutic tool to help people with Parkinson's manage their symptoms. Barbara and Parkinson's Europe also recently released a collection of illustrations through a paperback and a free e-book entitled, "What Parkinson's Feels Like," that showcased what Parkinson's symptoms felt like to many people around the world. All profits from the books are donated to Parkinson's charities. 

I never thought I’d live through a pandemic, or be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD). They both seemed to have come out of nowhere in 2020. They woke me up to my mortality, aware that I’m living on borrowed time. So, I consciously look for ways to give back to my community, mostly through the arts. As a visual artist - drawing and painting are my ‘happy places’. When I use these skills through community service, I feel good, almost like a dopamine rush.

I had a shaky start to the world of Parkinson’s disease. It took a year and a half of my asking my doctor repeatedly for help diagnosing my dominant hand tremor, before I was sent to a neurologist. About 2 years after first noticing my tremor, I was finally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I wonder if I were a man, maybe this timeline would have been shorter?

We still tend to associate Parkinson’s as a condition that older, white males have. Perhaps this is influenced by medical textbook illustrations of Parkinson’s, which show an older, white man going through the stages of this disease. But almost half of the people living with Parkinson’s are women. So, I figured it was time to represent women as also having PD. So, I went about re-illustrating the 5 stages of Parkinson’s with women of different races around the globe.

Parkinson’s impacts people of all shapes and sizes. For practicality’s sake, I illustrated one body shape and size for all the women, wearing the same color of clothing to help viewers focus on the physical changes that generally take place in the different stages of PD progression. The women are also younger than the textbook image, to reflect that there is a growing trend of people being diagnosed before 50, known as young onset Parkinson’s disease (YOPD). Next year, I plan to re-illustrate images with men, featuring more racially diverse and younger images.

It would make a positive difference to women getting this diagnosis seeing themselves reflected in such illustrations. This would go a long way to help them feel that they are not alone. I hope that health care professionals will use these new illustrations of women going through the 5 stages of Parkinson’s to educate patients and each other, and to help challenge the stigma and stereotypes that currently exist.

To help spread the word about these new illustrations I reached out to other PD organizations with the hope to have a ‘big reveal’ on International Women’s Day, March 8th. Parkinson’s Europe, Parkinson’s Canada, Canadian Open Parkinson's Network, Parkinson's UK, The Parkinson's Foundation and many more, will help to spread the word that yes, women get Parkinson’s too.

These images are free to download and use, with artist credit here.