ROOMMATES 31 YEARS APART IN AGE FREE ONE ANOTHER FROM HIDING PARKINSON'S

Roommates Li Jiang and Elaine Jongsma are 31 years apart in age, but they have much in common.

They love debriefing after first dates, lingering in each other’s doorways to chat about the day’s events, and biking.

And, they both spent many years after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease trying to hide it.

But now, Jongsma said, “We can just be ourselves.”

Jiang, 35, doesn’t bat an eye when Jongsma, 66, crawls around the house on her knees in the morning before her medication kicks in, and there’s no judgment when Jiang cries without any emotional trigger, one of the symptoms she experiences with her young-onset Parkinson’s.

The pair got to know each other at a cross-country bike ride for Parkinson's awareness in August. While peddling more than 2,000 kilometres across British Columbia and Alberta, they learned they were about to live in the same city.

Jiang was going back to school in the fall to study integrated rehabilitation and humanities at McMaster University.

Jongsma had a spare room at her house in Hamilton.

“It was really a fluke,” Jongsma said.

Since forming the bond, they've encouraged each other to be as they are, rather than live in fear of being belittled, pitied and judged. They say living alone or with roommates who are aware that they have this diagnosis doesn't compare to their innate understanding of one another.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive movement disorder that can cause nerve cells in the brain to weaken, damage, and die, leading to tremor, stiffness, and challenges with balance, walking and talking.

Dr. Sarah Lidstone, a movement disorder neurologist at University Health Network, said there are also non-motor symptoms, which some studies have shown women experience more often than men, such as anxiety, depression and fatigue.

“There also tends to be this idea that, ‘Oh, they're just feeling anxious or their mood is low because they got this diagnosis, but actually neurochemically in the brain there can be an overlap in those symptoms for sure,” Lidstone said.

She said Parkinson’s has long been illustrated in medical school as a hunched over 70-year-old man, and only recently did that image evolve to include a woman going on a run.