The War at Home: Fighting Parkinson's Disease Up Close

Madison Lyleroehr
Knoxville, TN
Brandeis University 2009

Recently, I was thrilled to meet and chat with the amazing Michael J. Fox at a Team Fox event in New York that honored individual contributors to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Disease Research. My grandmother lost her battle with PD in May 2006. My mother, who was diagnosed with PD five years ago, fights on. So you might say that PD is our family's "war at home."

You can't imagine how this disease affects lives until you've seen it up close. Things you take for granted—like eating, getting dressed, brushing your teeth—become very difficult and often impossible to perform. The disease has no cure, and nothing will slow its progress. Medication helps relieve symptoms, but it has significant side effects. As I watched my mom and grandmother struggle, I often thought "Something has to give!" Then it dawned on me that I could give!

I contacted the Fox Foundation to see what I could do. Coincidentally, I was almost ready to release a new Christmas CD, so I decided to donate all its profits to Team Fox. What better way to honor Gramma and Mom than to "give back" my own gifts?

Next thing I knew, I found myself among the honorees at a Team Fox Awards Gala in New York, and I was chatting with Fox himself! Although everything he said was awesome, one fact really got my attention: the best drug available to treat Parkinson's Disease is over 40 years old!

Forty years! More than six million people worldwide are now living with PD, diagnoses are increasing at an alarming rate, and it is feared that 1-in-5 people alive today will eventually be diagnosed with this or a similar neurological disease. It's as if we are trying to fight a fleet of stealth bombers with a B-52 and some machine guns. That's just not good enough.

So I'm asking everyone to join the fight for a cure. Together, we can make a difference! How?

  • Join Team Fox at www.teamfox.org and create your own fund-raiser!
  • Donate directly to MJFF, by going to my website at www.madisonsings.com. Click on LINKS, then click on FOX FOUNDATION and follow the signs from there.
  • Buy my CD from the same website - all my profits go to MJFF.
  • Organize a service project for your school, church, or synagogue, and support my efforts with your donation; for details, write to me at madison@madisonsings.com

The good news is that scientists feel that they are just "inches" away from finding a cure for PD, which would also pave the way to cures for even more deadly neurological diseases. But reaching that goal requires funding aggressive research, which is the Fox Foundation's sole purpose.

It's not about stem cells. It's about helping the living victims of a dread disease. Join us.

The life you save could be your own.