Back to The Defiant Few ←My Diagnosis Does Not Own My Imagination.
When illness gives you an audience, changing the subject can feel like betrayal—even when the change is how you take your identity back.
A blank page has no medical history. It does not know how I walk, what medication I take, how long I have been diagnosed or what strangers expect me to say next. For a few seconds, before I touch it, the page is the only room where Parkinson’s has not already introduced me.
Then I start working on a criminal and legal psychological thriller, and the page asks different questions. Who is lying? What does a person protect when the truth becomes expensive? How far will someone go to keep the version of himself he can still live with? The page is interested in motive, consequence and damage. It does not ask me to explain dopamine, demonstrate courage or turn suffering into a lesson. That feels like freedom. It also feels, if I am honest, a little like disloyalty.