By host Tom Ashbrook

When actor Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the whole country took notice. When Dr. Thomas Graboys got the news, it was — as for most of the thousands of Americans hit with Parkinson’s every year — a more private affair.

Graboys had been a tip-top doctor. Cardiologist to the stars. Now he was being tipped onto the Parkinson’s path, where tying your shoes is a major challenge.

Tremors. Dementia. Dependence. From power to powerlessness. Now, while he still can, he’s telling that story.

This hour, On Point: The doctor’s own Parkinson’s disease.

Guests:

Dr. Thomas Graboys, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and dementia, he is professor of medicine at Harvard University, a senior physician at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, president emeritus of the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Nobel Prize-winner and co-author (with Peter Zheutlin) of “Life in the Balance: A Physician’s Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia”

Vicki Baker-Graboys, CEO of “Su Casa Designs,” an interior decorating firm;
Dr. John Growdon, director of memory and movement disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.