Jim Rhodes

I just wanted to send a heartfelt thank you to each of you for the blessings you are and the incredible impact you’ve had on my life (and I know on all of us “Parkies” battling this damnable PD!).

My already diminished balance had gotten progressively worse over the past few months. I had begun to fall, actually about a dozen times. Because I kept falling, I had gotten a cane in order to be more stable and not end up in the ER or hospital with something broken.

Over the past three months, we have been hard at work in our Rock Steady Boxing routine here in Alabama and about three weeks ago I began to notice I was more stable, with no falls during the past three weeks.

I just left my neurologist’s office after my four month follow-up appointment, and he did balance testing and was over the top about how much I had improved since he last saw me!  He has been very supportive of our RSB program here in Huntsville, referring many patients to us and told me that he has seen similar strides with his other patients in the Rock Steady Boxing program.

I showed him a video on my phone from yesterday’s class and he played it several times…he kept pointing at the video saying “Is that you with that crazy hat?” (He’s referring to my do-rag of which I have many different ones for each class). I love being our class clown!

We now have 35 boxers and Coach Carolyn is getting on average 2-3 calls a day to set up new boxer assessments. As I said to our coaches the other day, stealing a line from Chief Brody, “we’re going to need a bigger boat”!

– Jim Rhodes, RSB Rocket City