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My dad has Parkinson's disease. Taking a trip with him one weekend taught me a lot.

brain, injury, disease, coordination
Image pulled from Pixabay.

Pakinson's disease causes unintended movements from a brain disorder affecting the nervous system.

"Watch him like a hawk. Take no excuses."

Those were some of my mom's last words to me as I set off with my dad for D.C. He hadn't been up north to see his own father, who is pushing 100, in over a year, and my dad's advanced Parkinson's disease made traveling alone impossible. So I was enlisted to go with him. For the first time, I'd be in charge of his medication, along with shepherding him through the airport, getting him in and out of bed — pretty much everything.

"You can't take him at his word," she'd tell me.

"Don't hand him his pills and walk away. He'll never take them. Don't leave him while he's brushing his teeth at night. He'll never make it to bed before the medicine knocks him out. Don't assume he's going to do what he says he's going to do."

"You have to watch him like a hawk," she said. "Take no excuses."

Maybe that's why it felt so good when I was finally able to text her, on our return trip, that we had made it through security and were almost at our gate.

My dad was in the bathroom while I leaned against the wall outside waiting for him. We were flying out of Reagan International, and in four days of travel, there were no emergencies. No crises. No disasters or catastrophes. There had been no medicine mix-ups, no missed doses, no falls, no accidents. Everything had been fine.

That's not to say it had gone easy, but at least it had gone. Though we weren't home yet.

Not quite anyway.

When my dad came out of the bathroom, we headed to the seating area in front of our gate. As we passed a small concession stand, awkwardly pitted in the middle of the room like a prize counter at an arcade, he mumbled something about being thirsty.

"A pink lemonade sounds good," he said. And he reached out and grabbed one from the cooler.

We had all of our bags on us. Him carrying one, me rolling the other with a duffel slung over its handle. I looked at the narrow, winding queue leading to the cashier and back down at our bulky bags as my dad slowly started to drift away from the concession stand, lemonade still in his grasp.

"Why don't we get settled over by the gate, put our bags down?" I said. "Then I'll come back over and get you something to drink."

With him, I had learned to think several steps ahead. I learned to scout obstacles and anticipate problems.

I learned enough to know that, with only one hand free, he'd have trouble getting his wallet out of his sweatpants, or he'd trip over his feet and tumble into the people in front of us, or he'd inadvertently shoplift this lemonade if I didn't take it and put it back.

But still, it felt awful to say something so patronizing to my own father.

He agreed that we should get settled and we made our way over to the gate, finally coming to a stop in front of a row of roomy handicapped seating.

"Dad, you want to sit here with the bags while I go get us a drink?"

"OK, sure."

He just stood there.

"Dad?"

He does this thing where he's always standing. He'll wander into a living room conversation where everyone's sitting, and he'll just stand in front of a seat and talk from there. You'll ask him if he wants to sit, and he'll bend his knees slightly but then pause, almost as if he's forgotten he was going to sit in the middle of doing it.

There's something unsettling about someone standing when you feel like they should be sitting.

"Dad, you want to just sit here for a minute while I get us a drink?"

On that, he plopped down and I positioned our bags so they'd be in his sight and reach.

"A muffin would be good, too," he added.

"OK. I'll see if they have muffins."

I turned and headed back to the concession stand. I couldn't have walked more than five or six steps before I glanced back over my shoulder at him. He was still sitting there. I don't know what I expected to see — like he was going to erupt in flames the moment he was out of my sight or something.

I got in line, and as I waited my turn, I kept looking back.

“Watch him like a hawk."

We hadn't come this far to have him fall down and break his wrist or have our bags stolen from under his nose.

We hadn't come this far without a disaster to have one now.

I paid for the lemonade and a blueberry muffin I spotted in the display case. And I looked back over at my dad again.

He was standing.

What is he doing? I wondered. Is he sifting through our bags? Is he going to wander off?

I hurried back over and found him contemplating our belongings. He was hoping to find a bag of sliced oranges we'd packed for the trip, trying to solve our luggage like it was some impossible puzzle.

I unzipped the outermost pocket of my suitcase and handed him the oranges, the lemonade, and the muffin.

We both sat down and he began to eat.

He attacked the muffin the way you might eat an apple — gripping it with the entire width of his hand and lifting it to his face for enormous bites. It crumbled as he mauled it, massive pieces tumbling over the wrapper and landing on him. All over his lap and his shirt and his seat and the seat between us.

He was not mortified, like I would have been if it were me.

He wasn't even affected.

Halfway through, he had clumps of muffin pinched precariously between his fingers. He was picking up stray blueberries off the seat and eating them.

People were staring. I wanted to help, to do something, but I didn't know what.

I had my phone to my ear now, working out the last minute details of our shuttle pickup. I had my other hand death-gripped around his pill case, which I was under strict orders to never let out of my sight.

As my dad gnawed his way further into the muffin's core, I noticed this older bald guy in a fleece jacket across from us stealing glances at the scene. I thought about telling him to mind his own business, but reconsidered given the absurdity of what was happening. I understood why he'd be compelled to look.

But I started to hate this random guy anyway.

There was nothing spectacular about him. He was bald with some prickly silver stubble covering his chin and an orange fleece pullover. He was just a guy, really.

But what stood out about this man, to me, was that he didn't have any food stains on his clothes.

He didn't have elastic shoelaces or drawstring pants. He didn't have hearing aids. He didn't have anyone with him to help him get on the plane without getting lost.

I started to hate him because I thought, this is who my dad was supposed to be.

My call finally ended and I hung up. At this point, I had seen enough of the muffin massacre and was ready to go get us a plate, some napkins, something. But I remembered I hadn't gotten us a preboarding pass yet and we'd be boarding any minute. My dad — not surprisingly — doesn't do well with people nipping at his heels, squeezing around him, crowding him, hurrying him. We needed to board before the rest of the passengers. It was one of the last obstacles between us and home.

At the ticketing desk, I kept glancing back as I talked to the agent.

“I'm traveling with my father who is, uh, he has… He's handicapped."

I never know how to describe it.

When it comes to Parkinson's, "handicapped" always seems to be both wildly conservative and entirely overly dramatic at the same time.

It doesn't come close to telling the whole story.

As we wrapped up the transaction at the counter, I caught my dad standing again from the corner of my eye.

Is he sifting through our bags? Is he going to wander off?"

As soon as I got our preboarding pass, I hurried back over to him.

He had, to my complete surprise, cleaned himself off pretty well with a stray napkin. He'd brushed the crumbs away from his shirt and pants. He'd wiped the seat clean, save for a few hangers-on in the crevice. And he had stuffed all the trash into the small white bag that the muffin came in.

In that moment, I got a glimpse of my dad. The real one.

The one who raised three kids and taught us how to throw a football, how to use a hammer, how to treat people. The one who, in another world, would have been leading me through the airport, reciting Civil War trivia as we walked. The one who, to an outsider, would have been just a guy.

The one who, to those who knew him, was far from just a guy.

He looked at me as I approached and said, "Are we ready to go home?"

For a second, it felt like we were already there.

We stood and waited to board, watching travelers deplane from the previous flight. We were mostly silent because no one ever wrote a handbook on how to ask your father if he's sure he doesn't need to use the restroom and then jump into shooting the shit about sports.

So it was easier to just say nothing.

But it was a comfortable silence. Maybe even a happy one. Because the catastrophe I had dreaded and been warned about and tried so hard to avoid, well, it ended up just being a particularly unwieldy muffin.

And all it took was a single napkin to wipe away any trace that anything had ever gone wrong.

If only for a second.

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Gen Zer asks Gen X how they got around without GPS and the answers are perfectly accurate

"We're old. Older than Google, too."

Photo credit: Canva

Gen Zer asks how people got around without GPS, Gen X responds

It's easy to forget what life was like before cell phones fit in your pocket and Google could tell you the meaning of life in less than .2 seconds. Gen Z is the first generation to be born after technology began to move faster than most people can blink. They never had to deal with the slow speeds and loud noises of dial up internet.

In fact, most people that fall in the Gen Z category have no idea that their parents burned music on a CD thinking that was peak mix tape technology. Oh, how wrong they were. Now songs live in a cloud but somehow come out of your phone without having to purchase the entire album or wait until the radio station plays the song so you can record it.

But Gen Z has never lived that struggle so the idea of things they consider to be basic parts of life not existing are baffling to them. One self professed Gen Zer, Aneisha, took to social media to ask a question that has been burning on her mind–how did people travel before GPS?

Now, if you're older than Gen Z–whose oldest members are just 27 years old–then you likely know the answer to the young whippersnapper's question. But even some Millennials had trouble answering Aneisha's question as several people matter of factly pointed to Mapquest. A service that requires–you guessed it, the internet.

Aneisha asks in her video, "Okay, serious question. How did people get around before the GPS? Like, did you guys actually pull a map and like draw lines to your destination? But then how does that work when you're driving by yourself, trying to hold up the map and drive? I know it's Gen Z of me but I kind of want to know."

@aneishaaaaaaaaaaa I hope this reaches the right people, i want to know
♬ original sound - aneishaaaaaaa

These are legitimate questions for someone who has never known life without GPS. Even when most Millennials were starting to drive, they had some form of internet to download turn-by-turn directions, so it makes sense that the cohort between Gen Z and Gen X would direct Aneisha to Mapquest. But there was a time before imaginary tiny pirates lived inside of computer screens to point you in the right direction and tales from those times are reserved for Gen X.

The generation known for practically raising themselves chimed in, not only to sarcastically tell Millennials to sit down but to set the record straight on what travel was like before the invention of the internet. Someone clearly unamused by younger folks' suggestion shares, "The people saying mapquest. There was a time before the internet kids."

Others are a little more helpful, like one person who writes, "You mentally note landmarks, intersections. Pretty easy actually," they continue. "stop at a gas station, open map in the store, ($4.99), put it back (free)."

"Believe it or not, yes we did use maps back then. We look at it before we leave, then take small glances to see what exits to take," someone says, which leaves Aneisha in disbelief, replying, "That's crazyy, I can't even read a map."

"Pulled over and asked the guy at the gas station," one person writes as another chimes in under the comment, "and then ask the guy down the street to make sure you told me right."

Imagine being a gas station attendant in the 90s while also being directionally challenged. Was that part of the hiring process, memorizing directions for when customers came in angry or crying because they were lost? Not knowing where you were going before the invention of the internet was also a bit of a brain exercise laced with exposure therapy for those with anxiety. There were no cell phones so if you were lost no one who cared about you would know until you could find a payphone to check in.

The world is so overly connected today that the idea of not being able to simply share your location with loved ones and "Ask Siri" when you've gotten turned around on your route seems dystopian. But in actuality, if you took a few teens from 1993 and plopped them into 2024 they'd think they were living inside of a sci-fi movie awaiting aliens to invade.

Technology has made our lives infinitely easier and nearly unrecognizable from the future most could've imagined before the year 2000, so it's not Gen Z's fault that they're unaware of how the "before times" were. They're simply a product of their generation.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Health

Woman uses her super sense of smell to help scientists detect Parkinson's in minutes

Joy Milne first smelled the disease on her husband 10 years before his diagnosis.

Photo by Fulvio Ciccolo on Unsplash

There is currently no definitive test to detect Parkinson's.

We don’t always choose our gifts. Joy Milne’s superpower, one she inherited from her mother’s side of the family, was having a highly acute sense of smell. Milne might have never used her olfactory talent as a force for good had it not been for her late husband, Les Milne.

According to NPR, Les and Joy met in their teens and it was love at first sniff. "He had a lovely male musk smell. He really did," she told NPR.

After many years of a happy marriage, Joy noticed her husband, then in his 30s, had developed an “overpowering sort of nasty yeast smell.” The running joke-slash-complaint was that Les “wasn’t washing enough.”

Eventually Les’ scent wouldn’t be the only thing to change. Joy told NPR that her once funny, thoughtful husband completely transformed, becoming “moody,” irritable, and even aggressive. He wouldn’t receive a proper Parkinson’s diagnosis until the age of 45.

Joy didn’t suspect that she could somehow detect the disease until going with Les to a Parkinson’s support group and noticing that the same distinctive smell seemed to fill the room. After sharing the discovery with her husband, she knew she had to take action.

Joy began working with researchers at University of Edinburgh and through a series of experiments confirmed that she could sniff out Parkinson’s with flawless accuracy. Now scientists have created a breakthrough method of detection based on Joy’s special ability.

parkinsons

This new test works in mere minutes.

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Under the belief that Parkinson’s affects a person’s odor due to a chemical change in sebum, or skin oil, doctors simply run a cotton ball along the back of the neck, then identify specific molecules linked to the neurological condition. TheBBC reported that the skin-swab test is 95% accurate under laboratory conditions.

Though this medical advancement is still in its early stages, the discovery is promising. There is currently no definitive test to get a Parkinson’s diagnosis and, as Joy explained to Sky News, it is often not identified until patients have “over 50% of neuronal damage.”

Les died in 2015 at 65. An earlier diagnosis might have provided the opportunity to improve his lifestyle, which could possibly have offset symptoms. “It has been found that exercise and change of diet can make a phenomenal difference,” Joy told The Guardian.

She also recalled to BBC News that it would have meant having an explanation for the mood swings, not to mention traveling, spending more time with family… essentially, making the most out of what time was left. That perhaps is the biggest saving grace an early diagnosis could offer.

Les’ final wish before he passed was for Joy to continue using her gift, assuring that "it will make a difference." Joy is keeping that promise and currently extending her “super smeller” power to help smell other diseases like cancer and tuberculosis (TB).

While she notes that her superpower does make outings like shopping a “curse sometimes,” she also sees it as a “benefit” allowing her to help others.


This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Family

'It's not Little Sun': Mom admits she's having trouble pronouncing her newborn's name

It was fine 'til other people tried to say it and now she's confused.

via JustusMoms29/TikTok (used with permission)

Justus Stroup is starting to realize her baby's name isn't that common.

One of the many surprises that come with parenthood is how the world reacts to your child’s name. It’s less of a surprise if your child has a common name like John, Mohammed, or Lisa. But if you give your child a non-traditional name that’s gender-neutral, you’re going to throw a lot of folks off-guard and mispronunciations are going to be an issue.

This exact situation happened with TikTok user Justus Stroup, who recently had her second child, but there’s a twist: she isn’t quite sure how to pronounce her child’s name either. "I may have named my daughter a name I can't even pronounce," Stroup opens the video. "Now, I think I can pronounce it, but I've told a couple of people her name and there are two people who thought I said the same exact thing. So, I don't know that I know how to [pronounce] her name correctly."


@justusmoms29

Just when you think you name your child something normal! #2under2mom #postpartum #newborn #momsoftiktok #uniquenames #babyname #babygirl #sahm #momhumor

Stroup’s daughter is named Sutton and the big problem is how people around her pronounce the Ts. Stroup tends to gloss over the Ts, so it sounds like Suh-en. However, some people go hard on the Ts and call her “Sut-ton.”

"I'm not gonna enunciate the 'Ts' like that. It drives me absolutely nuts," she noted in her TikTok video. "I told a friend her name one time, and she goes, 'Oh, that's cute.' And then she repeated the name back to me and I was like, 'No, that is not what I said.'"

Stroup also had a problem with her 2-year-old son’s speech therapist, who thought the baby’s name was Sun and that there weren’t any Ts in the name at all. "My speech therapist, when I corrected her and spelled it out, she goes, 'You know, living out in California, I have friends who named their kids River and Ocean, so I didn't think it was that far off.'"

Stroup told People that she got the name from a TV show called “The Lying Game,” which she used to watch in high school. "Truthfully, this was never a name on my list before finding out I was pregnant with a girl, but after finding out the gender, it was a name I mentioned and my husband fell in love with," says Stroup. "I still love the name. I honestly thought I was picking a strong yet still unique name. I still find it to be a pretty name, and I love that it is gender neutral as those are the type of names I love for girls."

The mother could choose the name because her husband named their son Greyson.



The commenters thought Stroup should tell people it’s Sutton, pronounced like a button. “I hear it correctly! Sutton like Button. I would pronounce it like you, too!” Amanda wrote.

“My daughter’s name is Sutton. I say it the same way as you. When people struggle with her name, I say it’s Button but with a S. That normally immediately gets them to pronounce it correctly,” Megan added.

After the video went viral, Stroup heard from people named Hunter and Peyton, who are dealing with a similar situation. “I've also noticed the two most common names who run into the same issue are Hunter (people pronouncing it as Hunner or HUNT-ER) and Payton (pronounced Pey-Ton or Pey-tin, most prefer it as Pey-tin),” she told Upworthy.

“Another person commented saying her name is Susan and people always think it is Season or Steven,” Stroup told Upworthy. After having her second child, she learned that people mix up even the simplest names. “No name is safe at this point,” she joked.

The whole situation has Stroup rethinking how she pronounces her daughter’s name. Hopefully, she got some advance on how to tell people how to pronounce it, or else she’ll have years of correcting people in front of her. "Good lord, I did not think this was going to be my issue with this name," she said.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Joy

Mic'd-up hockey goalie's hilarious self-talk during games has people in stitches

Nick the Goalie's monologuing is just delightful.

@nickthegoalie_1/TikTok

You don't have to watch hockey to enjoy Nick the Goalie's running commentary.

Goalkeepers and goaltenders in all kinds of sports play a unique role on a team. While other players have to communicate and strategize with one another as they play, a goalie just has one job—keep the ball/puck/etc. out of the goal. It's a hugely important job, but pretty straightforward.

When their team is on the other side of a field or rink, goalies watch and wait. Since their teammates know and trust that they're watching the action, they don't really have to interact with anyone most of the time. And while they can't totally zone out, they have all kinds of time to themselves while the action is happening far away.

Have you ever seen what happens when a person—especially someone who likes to talk—has a whole lot of time to themselves and no one to talk to?

Meet Nick Weston, who is giving everyone a glimpse into a world most of us only watch from afar and never get to hear. Weston is an amateur hockey player from Vancouver, Canada, who has become a TikTok sensation with his mic'd-up goalie videos under his nickname, Nick the Goalie.

Do you remember the snowboarding 4-year-old in a dinosaur costume who coined the phrase "I'm a stuck-a-saurus!" and won hearts with her adorably entertaining monologuing? Nick the Goalie is like that, only as a grown man playing a team sport.

People love Nick the Goalie's wholesome self-talk as he performs his goalie duties with gusto. (Though he often wears a Vancouver Canucks jersey, he doesn't play for a National Hockey League team. As he explained to CTV, he gets brought in to play goaltender on various local league teams.)

His videos have even been shared by ESPN and the NHL, and the comments on his videos are as fabulous as his running commentary.

Watch:

@nickthegoalie_1

Mine! #hockey #goalie #nhl #hockeyboys

"This is how I imagine a golden retriever's internal monologue. He's SO excited, I love it," wrote one commenter on Reddit.

"Only reason I gravitated towards the goalie position, other than my hatred of running, was my need to constantly sing to myself. Can relate so hard," wrote another.

A whole thread of soccer, field hockey, and lacrosse goalkeepers, as well as baseball catchers and outfielders, confirmed that this is exactly what they do—monologue, monologue, monologue.

@nickthegoalie_1

I COULD’VE DROPPED MY CROISSANT 🥐 #hockey #goalie #nhl #hockeyboys

It's hard not to smile at the the wholesomeness and hilarity of his self-talk. The singing, the squealing, the trash talk to no one in particular—it's all just so delightful.

@nickthegoalie_1

This video is a lot to take in #hockey #goalie #hockeyboys #nhl

Even people who aren't that into ice hockey are commenting with how much they enjoy his videos. As one person wrote, "Ok fine I’ll watch sports if I can get this insider commentary for every game."

So much fun. Recently, Weston has been using his social media fame to raise money for the Canucks Autism Network in addition to sharing the sport he loves. As of 2024, over 1.1 million has been raised.

Keep following Nick the Goalie on TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram.


This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Pets

Man finds a mysterious egg in London, incubates it, and launches a Pixar-worthy journey of love

When Riyadh found an abandoned egg, he had no idea that it would change his life.

Courtesy of Riyadh Khalaf/Instagram (used with permission)

When Riyadh found an egg, he had no idea how much it would change his life.

The story of Riyadh and Spike starts like the opening to a children's book: "One day, a man walking through the city spotted a lone egg where an egg should not have been…" And between that beginning and the story's mostly sweet ending is a beautiful journey of curiosity, care, and connection that has captivated people all over the world.

Irish author Riyadh Khalaf was out walking in London when he came upon an egg. "We just found what we think is a duck egg," Riyadh says in a video showing the milky white egg sitting in a pile of dirt. "Just sitting here on its own. No nest. No other eggs."

Thinking there was no way it was going to survive on its own, Riyadh put the egg in a paper cup cushioned with a napkin and took it home to incubate it. He said he used to breed chickens and pigeons, so he had some experience with birds. Knowing the egg could survive for a while in a dormant state, he ordered an incubator on Amazon, and the journey to see if the egg was viable began.

Even though it was "just an egg," Riyadh quickly became attached, and once it showed signs of life he took on the role of "duck dad." Every day, the egg showed a drastic change in development, and Riyadh's giddy joy at each new discovery—movement, a discernible eye, a beak outline—was palpable. He devoured information on ducks to learn as much as he could about the baby he was (hopefully) about to hatch and care for.

Finally, 28 days later, the shell of the egg began to crack. "I could see this very clear outline of the most gorgeous little round bill," Riyadh said—confirmation that it was, indeed, a duck as he had suspected. But duckling hatching is a process, and one they have to do it on their own. Ducklings instinctively know to turn the egg as it hatches so that the umbilical cord detaches, and the whole process can take up to 48 hours. Riyadh watched and monitored until he finally fell asleep, but at 4:51am, 29 hours after the egg had started to hatch, he awakened to the sound of tweets.

"There was just this little wet alien staring back at me," he said. "It was love at first sight."

Riyadh named his rescue duckling Spike. Once Spike was ready to leave the incubator, he moved into "Duckingham Palace," a setup with all of the things he would need to grow into a healthy, self-sufficient duck—including things that contribute to his mental health. (Apparently ducklings can die from poor mental health, which can happen when they don't have other ducks to interact with—who knew?)

"My son shall not only survive, but he shall thrive!" declared the proud papa.

Riyadh knew it would be impossible for Spike to not imprint on him somewhat, but he didn't want him to see him as his mother. Riyadh set up mirrors so that Spike could see another duckling (even though it was just himself) and used a surrogate stuffed duck to teach him how to do things like eat food with his beak. He used a duck whistle and hid his face from Spike while feeding him, and he played duck sounds on his computer to accustom Spike to the sounds of his species.

"It's just such a fulfilling process to watch a small being learn," said Riyadh.

As Spike grew, Riyadh took him to the park to get him accustomed to the outdoors and gave him opportunities to swim in a small bath. He learned to forage and do all the things a duck needs to do. Throughout, Riyadh made sure that Spike was getting the proper balanced nutrition he needed as well. Check this out:


After 89 days, the day finally came for Spike to leave Riyadh's care and be integrated into a community of his kind "to learn how to properly be a duck." A rehabilitation center welcomed him in and he joined a flock in an open-air facility where he would be able to choose whether to stay or to leave once he became accustomed to flying. Within a few weeks of being at the rehabilitation center, his signature mallard colors developed, marking his transition from adolescence. Spike has been thriving with his flock, and Riyadh was even able to share video of his first flight.

This is the where "And they all lived happily ever after" would be a fitting end to the story, but unfortunately, Spike and his fowl friends are living in trying times. The rehabilitation center was notified by the U.K. government in December of 2024 that the duck flock needed to be kept indoors for the time being to protect them from a bird flu outbreak and keep it from spreading.

Building an entire building for a flock of ducks is not a simple or cheap task, so Riyadh called on his community of "daunties" and "duncles" who had been following Spike's story to help with a fundraiser to build a "Duckingham Palace" for the whole flock. Riyadh's followers quickly raised over £11,000, which made a huge difference for the center's owners to be able to protect Spike and his friends.

All in all, Riyadh and Spike's story is a testament to what can happen when people genuinely care. If Riyadh had left that egg where it was, it may not have made it. If Spike hadn't survived and been moved to the rehab center, the ducks there would be in greater danger of the bird flu due to the costs of building an indoor shelter for them. Despite the ongoing bird flu threat, the story really does have a happy ending.

Thank to Riyadh for sharing Spike's journey with us. (You can follow Riyadh on Instagram here.)


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