I’m blown away by your generosity, thank you so much!
If you donated anonymously, I don’t get to see who you are on the backend of the system, so thank you to my anonymous donors, I appreciate you. And to everyone else, I think I’ve sent you a personal thank you message, but if I haven’t, THANK YOU!
Last night I had a kick-off call with the Michael J Fox Foundation and the rest of the team who are raising money and climbing the mountain. It was so lovely to meet the others and hear their stories and why they’re doing this epic challenge. I came off the call really excited and with renewed energy to do this (I’ve been having an inner dialogue with myself which goes something like “you hate camping, you couldn’t even manage glamping in a treehouse without a minor breakdown”, “you have no business thinking you can climb a mountain with a 19,000ft elevation - you get breathless walking up a set of stairs!”, “you have too much going on, you don’t have time for this” etc etc, I’m sure you can imagine!). But, the truth is, I can do this, I have plenty of time to train for it, I’m healthy and I’m stronger (mentally and physically) than I think I am(and than I ever have been). Two of the participants themselves have PD and I’m doing this trek for them, my Dad and everyone else that has this disease (thank you to those of you that have shared your stories with me about loved ones having it - it keeps me going).
So that’s it for now. My friend has given me a training outline, above and beyond what I’m currently doing for exercise and I start that this week.
I’ll pop back in at the end of the month with another update!
Joanne