Page 56 - ABILITY Magazine -Cedric Yarbrough Issue

have had many injuries throughout my 71 years. IThese mishaps have challenged me physically and
associated with it. The mental toughness required to combat multiple symptoms of Parkinson’s began in the summer 56 years ago while in Bloomsburg, PA where I challenged my nemesis—stuttering.
The Beginning
mentally. They include being hit by a car three times, breaking my right leg three times in five months, breaking my left wrist and elbow, falling,
being kicked in the eye, pulling leg muscles, wrench- ing my back, having shingles, stuttering and having Parkinson’s disease.
For decades, I was labeled a severe stutterer by speech therapists, psychiatrists, teachers, parents and peers. Non-stutterers don’t realize it requires a strong constitu- tion to cope physically with stuttering day after day, week after week and month after month. I speak with authority when I say the more severe the stutter, the more one’s body gets worn down quickly. For decades, I have experienced that worn out feeling. It is a feeling I experience now due to Parkinson’s.
None of my injuries have challenged me the way stutter- ing and Parkinson’s disease have. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system that impacts movement. It often starts with a tremor in one hand. Other symptoms are slow movement, stiffness and loss of balance. Parkinson’s patients have difficulty standing, walking and controlling involuntary body movements. They confront muscle rigidity, rhythmic muscle contrac- tions and a slow shuffling gait. It is caused by abnormal- ly low dopamine levels. Dopamine-generating cells, known as dopaminergic neurons (types of nerve cells) in the substantia nigra part of the brain have died.
I started stuttering when I was eight years old. Initially, my parents did not have a fear of stuttering. They believed it would go away. It did not. It stuck to me like fly paper. As the years passed stuttering became my nemesis. Just as Parkinson’s is my nemesis.
Stuttering is a speech disorder in which sounds, sylla- bles or words are repeated or last longer than normal. These problems cause a break in the flow of speech, called disfluency.
I was in the fifth grade when I visited my first speech therapist. He was Frank Jordan. I don’t remember much about him. Reflecting back to my sessions I believe he was not a very good speech therapist. I saw him once a week for four months. Jordon was a proponent of the rhythm theory, and the techniques he was teaching me
Throughout my years of battling Parkinson’s I have searched for solutions to deal with all the symptoms
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