Neuro Note #3

For this Neuro Note I chose to watch the movie Love and Other Drugs. The movie is centered around the romantic relationship of Jamie Randall, a womanizing drug rep, and Maggie Murdock, who has early onset Parkinson's disease. They meet while he is shadowing a doctor and Maggie is coming in for a checkup. She tells the doctor how it was hard to diagnose her at such an early age and it is later revealed that she has stage 1 parkinsons disease. Her doctors first thought it was an essential tremor, then wilson's disease, then huntingtons, syphilis, a brain tumor, and then finally she was diagnosed with stage 1 parkinsons. Jamie gets Maggie's number from the receptionist and they go on a date, where we see Maggie moving her hand uncontrollably. Jamie asks her if she has a resting tremor and asks if it comes and goes. She ignores him and shrugs it off. After this they begin a sexual relationship. Jamie revels to Maggie that he has a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and could not finish college. He is very smart but exhibits the classic signs of being careless that are associated with ADD. Throughout the movie we see Maggie's tremor worsening and her slipping into depression. Meanwhile, Jamie starts selling Viagra in addition to Zoloft. This brings Jamie to a Viagra conference in Chicago with his coworkers, and Maggie comes along as Jamie's guest. Someone there comes up to her and says "Stage 1? It isn't obvious", and invites her to a PD support group across the street. Maggie listens to people talk about how they have started to hate doing everyday tasks such as brushing their teeth and tying a bowtie, and also how parkinsons has made some of the speakers feel more compassion for others since they were diagnosed. This gives Maggie hope hearing other people like her and is one of the times in the films we see her at her happiest. Meanwhile across the street, Jamie starts to talk to the husband of a women who has stage 4 parkinsons. He tells Jamie how his wife lost her body and mind and he had to become a caretaker and help her with bodily functions. He tells Jamie to run away, which worries Jamie and inspires him to research cures. Maggie in contrast sees healthy Jamie and is unsure of their relationship because of her diagnosis. Maggie worries that no one will ever accept her diagnosis after the conference and breaks up with Jamie. At the end of the movie they realize that they really do love each other and will do anything to make their relationship work. The movie ends with Jamie deciding to pursue medical school and stay with Maggie. 
This movie furthered my learning by showing me a visual of the symptoms of parkinsons. I had never met anyone with the disease and was very curious as to what it looks like. Anne Hathaway, who plays Maggie, does a great job of depicting stage 1 parkinsons and showing the progression of the disease. I was impressed by Jamie's depiction of a resting tremor and found that the symptoms that the movie showed matched up with what we have learned in class. The movie did not depict Maggie having bradykinesia or the 'parkinson's mask' or any time of cogwheel or clasp knife rigidity yet, most likely because she was in stage 1 of the disease. The movie talks about the different medications that Maggie was on including L-DOPA, which reinforced the fact that loss of dopamine is a main hallmark of parkinsons. It also showed her declining stability and the tremors associated with PD very well. One of the most touching parts of the movie was when Maggie tries to open a pop-tart for Jamie and cannot, and just hands the unopened wrapper to him and tells him 'here's breakfast'. You can see the sadness in her eyes that she is unable to do normal things like cook breakfast with him. I watched this movie on the movie sharing website rielow, the link to it is: https://rielow.com/movies/tt0758752/love-and-other-drugs . I would recommend this movie to someone who is curious as to what stage 1 PD looks like. It does not show the progression of the disease as much as I had hoped, but I feel more knowledgeable about the beginnings of the disease and the despair that people can face when finding out they have a diagnosis of parkinsons.