My Parkinson's diagnosis led me to a new career and a new home
telegraph.co.ukBella was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease, at the age of 43. At the time, she was a legal training consultant with four young children, living in west London.
Her initial reaction was surprisingly pragmatic: ‘It was simply a case of getting on with things,’ she recalls. ‘With so many children in the house there was very little emotional energy left for anything else.
My diagnosis was completely eclipsed by their dramas, which was actually no bad thing.’A few years later, however, it was time for a lifestyle change, so she left her job in law. ‘Speaking all day had become stressful and I needed to move on to something else,’ she says.
Here was an opportunity to embrace her dormant creativity, something that she had for a long time ignored.With the help of a loan from a family member, she had bought a small west London cottage at auction and had been slowly refurbishing it, using architectural salvage, second-hand finds and ‘anything that was lovely but cheap’.A possible side effect of the medication used to treat Parkinson’s is a tendency to obsess – a gambling addiction being one of the most troublesome consequences.
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