Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Fighting Parkinson's with Gate Strategies

My Dad is a fighter of Parkinson's Disease.  If you are not familiar with Parkinson's Disease, it can best be explained as death of vital nerve cells in the brain called neurons.  These nerve cells dying cause tremors in my Dad's hands and also cause him to walk leaning forward and with a bit of a shuffle.  Parkinson's has also slowed my Dad down a lot.  This has caused some changes on our farm, including leaving all the combining and planting that my Dad use to do, to my brother.  However I believe this has been a great transition for him.  Jason has had the opportunity to learn and still has Dad there to answer questions.

There are a lot of things that Parkinson's has left my Dad unable to do.  There are a list of things that Dad has spent more of his time doing because these things have been removed from his daily chore list.  One of the things my Dad has really enjoyed working on is designing cattle handling facilities for friends and neighbors.  He also has a patent on hog pens that you can see at the Ross County Fair in Ohio. My Dad makes frequent trips to Kentucky with a plan to purchase gates and sell them to friends and neighbors.  Dad finds much enjoyment in designing, ordering, purchasing and delivering gates. 



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