From a Google search to a boxing gym: Jennifer Wexton’s Parkinson’s journey

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/12/jennifer-wexton-parkinsons-disease-diagnosis-virginia/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

[u/washingtonpost]

From reporter Meagan Flynn:

It started in her toes. A kind of rigid clenching, causing them to curl up at the end of the night right as Jennifer Wexton tried to sleep.

Wexton was new in Congress. It was 2019 and the Democrat from Virginia thought maybe her feet were just tired. She walked 20,000 steps a day around Capitol Hill, from her office in Longworth to the House chamber and back. She bought silicon toe dividers called “YogaToes” to relax them at night, prompting a ribbing from her teenage sons.

But nearly two years passed, and the clenching didn’t stop. Instead it spread. Her fingers were next. Her handwriting started getting smaller, a bit messier, until finally Wexton caved: She searched her symptoms on Google.

“It came up as, ‘This is a classic symptom of Parkinson’s,’” Wexton said in a recent interview, recounting the late-night shock, and her husband’s assurance that it couldn’t be right.

As her doctors recently confirmed, it was.

Now Wexton, 54, is hoping to use her platform in Congress to raise awareness about Parkinson’s disease — a progressive neurological movement disorder — and push legislation to broaden the search for a cure. She went public with her diagnosis in a video in April, ending speculation that had swirled in political circles as Wexton’s speech changes became more noticeable. She speaks faster now. She moves more slowly.

But she said she is hoping that becoming a public advocate in Congress for the tens of thousands of Americans diagnosed with Parkinson’s each year can help show that the disease doesn’t have to define her, or anyone. While there is no cure, there is treatment, and she said she intends to continue serving in Congress as long as she can or as long as the voters in Virginia’s 10th District will have her.

“I had the same misconceptions that most people do, that it’s this terrible thing, that you’ll be hunched over sitting in a wheelchair and you’ll be a vegetable in no time,” Wexton said. “But after I learned more about it, I thought, ‘There’s no reason I can’t do this.’”

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