Lori's Life

Lori Patin says, "I am a very lucky person—within a veryunlucky situation. You might find it strange that I say thisconsidering that I have had Parkinson's disease for more thanfifteen years. Perhaps you will come to agree when you getto know me better. While I would surely love to be free of thisdisease, there have been blessings along the way. And hope ahead.if you or someone you love faces something awful, something thattries to tear your world apart, I offer my story in the hope that youwill find encouragement here."

She was born Lori Cedik in 1942 outside Cleveland, Ohio.All four of her grandparents emigrated from Czechoslovakia. Herhusband, Bob, likes to say she is a pure-blooded Bohemian—uniqueand exotic in his imagination. Not surprisingly, herfamily was very "old school," in the European sense. Her parentswere strict, and as part of their family culture, they spent a lot oftime together with grandparents. Both her mother's and father'sparents lived on farms. Her younger brother, Don, and she, alongwith their parents, spent almost every weekend visiting one setof grandparents or the other. Sometimes they would just go for ameal, but often they would stay over Saturday night.

While Lori's mother's parents did not earn their living byfarming, her father's parents had a very successful farm, with largeorchards, where they grew apples, peaches, plums, and cherries.Their family often helped Grandfather with harvests because heneeded extra hands.

He also had a vineyard and even made his own wine. Forspecial occasions, he went down to the dirt-floor cellar and tooka dusty bottle from under the stairs. When he took the top off thebottle, smoke drifted up. Then everyone had to drink a little glass,even four-and-eight-year-old Don and Lori. It was horrible.

Her grandfather prided himself on using the most up-to-dateagricultural methods, including spraying his apple trees to protectagainst disease and blight.

Unfortunately, those "happy days" have come back to hauntLori. Parkinson's disease occurs more frequently in farm families.Experts find an increased incidence among people with exposureto agricultural chemicals.

Lori Cedik was a good student and the kind of child wholiked to please her parents and teachers. She was diligent anddetermined early on that she wanted to go to college. Today, afamily would be proud of a daughter with ambitions like that, butLori's parents, especially her father, were shocked. No one in herfamily had a higher education except the father, who had gone toa kind of engineering trade school. When she told him she wantedto become a lawyer, he said, "No. Girls are not lawyers. Girls aremothers."

So, painfully and reluctantly, Lori put that dream aside butwould not give up on going to college.

She told him, "I am going to college."

"Well, how are you going to pay for it?" he asked.

"I will find a way."

When Lori earned a scholarship to Muskingum University,he said she would have to pay for the rest of her tuition andliving expenses herself. Yet when the time came, he paid for themanyway. He was "old school" and stubborn, but in the end, hislove for Lori trumped a long-held bias toward women. Father anddaughter both ended up growing through the experience. Lori wasproud of him for changing his chauvinist ways, and in turn, hetaught her a lesson about the importance of changing long-heldbeliefs when it matters for someone you love.

When Lori graduated from Muskingum University, he wasalso one proud parent. "He didn't put it to me in so many words,but I knew. I often overheard him talking to his friends abouthis daughter who graduated from college, the first person in ourfamily to do so," she said.

At Muskingum, Lori met Bob Patin, her "current and onlyhusband." She says, "I have to admit that at first I did not care forhim at all."

Freshman year they went with a group to ski in Pennsylvania.Even though everyone was all jammed into one small car, Lorididn't speak to him. "I made up my mind he was full of himself—withouteven saying a word to him." She kept running into himat different things over the course of the next two years, but shealways thought, Oh my gosh, somebody ought to tell him that he isn'tas great as he thinks he is.

To be completely candid, however, Bob thought Lori was "agorgeous but snotty broad who dated all the wrong guys in thewrong [i.e., rival] fraternity." As it turned out, they both were infor a surprise.

Senior year, needing a date for a concert, Bob asked one of hisbest friends, Terry, for ideas because Bob's then-girlfriend had justgiven him back his fraternity pin. Terry suggested Lori because heknew she had also just been through a breakup so she would beavailable. When he called, Lori didn't want to seem overanxious.In fact, she probably wouldn't have gone at all if she hadn't justbroken up with her boyfriend. Also, Bob invited her to a FourFreshmen—her favorite group—concert.

Lori says, "Then I did a terrible thing. I debated whether Ishould accept him or not with my sorority sisters. While he wasstill on the phone! Holding the receiver out so he could hear!"

"Pretty demeaning," Bob says. The consensus among thesisters—which Bob heard—was, "What do you have to lose?"

Bob had to get back at her somehow. So when he showed upat the Delta Gamma Theta house, he brought dead flowers. Itlooked like a bush.

She thought this was hilarious. "It was the best date of myentire life."

What a shame. It was April, almost the end of their senioryear, and they had wasted all that time disliking each other.From then on, they spent every possible minute together. It wasfrenetic, attending fraternity parties, going to movies, even doingsilly things like cow tipping (big in Ohio!). In fact, they enjoyedthemselves so much that Bob almost flunked trigonometry.

Lori says, "Good thing he managed to pass, because withoutit, he wouldn't have graduated. We even broke the Delta GammaTheta rules big time by meeting on the sorority house fire escapeafter hours. He didn't have a lot of sense: he wore a bright whiteshirt and white shorts on a night with a full moon. It was as if hewanted to attract the campus police's attention."

"Courage trumps intelligence," Bob says. "And hormones dotoo. We had a lot of chemistry going for us."

They even went "turfing," where you sneak out to thefifty-yard line on the football field and get personal. "My fatherhad been so strict with me that I was grounded if I was as much asfive minutes late coming home from a date. I thought, Dad, youought to look at me now."

Lori says, "I guess I tripped over the line into respect for Bobwhen, at an off-campus party, he poured his drink out into a bush,saying he'd had enough. I said to myself, 'Wow. That is reallyresponsible. Maybe I've got a keeper.'"

Luckily, Bob's first job with Connecticut...