Why Are Family Members Afraid to Admit Their Love Ones with Parkinson’s Disease Hallucinate?

When former homicide detective Michael Calvin starting having hallucinations and delusions, no one thought that it might be Parkinson’s disease. The stereotypical image of a PD patient, after all, is that of a slow-moving, shuffling man or woman.
It took Michael seeing icebergs floating in the warm Caribbean Sea and his grown children sitting on the couch when they were nowhere in sight, for his wife Renee, a registered nurse, to spring into action.
As the family later learned, of the 1 million people with PD, half will have hallucinations and delusions. Yet, the reality is that less than 10-20 percent of caregivers of patients ever report the symptoms. They’re either embarrassed or do not realize non-motor symptoms are part of the disease.
Renee is on a mission to change that. She has partnered with the National Parkinson Foundation to spread the word that PD is ##MoreThanMotor.
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