There’s a lot more to Parkinson’s Disease than moving and shaking.

For local members of the Flathead Valley Parkinson’s Disease Support Group, that’s what they say people don’t understand. 

“The face of Parkinson’s is Michael J. Fox and the shaking,” said Tim Hartman, who suffers from the disease. “But 90 percent of it is invisible. People only see the surface.”

Hartman and his wife, Elli, are members of the thriving support group for disease sufferers and family members. It was founded six years ago by Lois Wagner and Inga Myers.

“I was hiking with Inga and she told me she had been diagnosed,” Wagner said. “She told me there were no support groups. I said why don’t we become one?”

The Parkinson’s Disease Support Group has met every month since that June 2009 gathering. The group meets at a conference room in The Summit Medical Fitness Center from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday of every month and can have more than 30 people in attendance. 

“You’re not by yourself,” Hartman said. “If you go the meeting, we’re not judgmental and private information doesn’t leave the room.”

“It’s like you’re family,” Elli said.

Parkinson’s Disease is a strange mental disorder where the brain reduces, then ceases, production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. It is a degenerative disorder that slowly destroys the body’s ability to move. 

About one in 300 Americans suffers from the disease. Some 75 percent of sufferers are diagnosed at around 60 years old. Another 10 percent are diagnosed at 80 years old and 15 percent of people with the disease — some as young as their 20s — suffer from early onset Parkinson’s.

Anson Fredenberg, 54, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s when she was 39. 

“I want people to know its not that weird of a thing,” he said. “But people don’t understand it. I have rigidity, I freeze a lot. I’ve had the police called on me because I took too long to walk across a parking lot.”

Hartman said he had seen similar situations. 

People suffering from Parkinson’s can walk shakily or “freeze” when muscles refuse to take another step. This can lead to calls to the police for public drunkenness or just suspicious behavior.

But there are more pressing dangers than wasting time with law enforcement.

“Freezing at the top of a flight of stairs is a big issue,” Hartman said. “They can fall down, and it is a huge killer of people with Parkinson’s. Another problem is swallowing, which can be difficult as well.”

While the group has problems with people thinking all they do is shake, it does offer begrudging respect to the celebrities who have brought it to the public eye. Celebrities such as Michael J. Fox, Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, Janet Reno, Johnny Cash and Pope John Paul II have all suffered or still suffer from the disorder. 

For Hartman, the road to diagnosis was a frustrating one. Nearly a decade ago he began to drop things from his left hand. When he went in for a bevy of tests in 2010, he wasn’t sure what the doctors would find.

“They ran a whole bunch of diagnostics,” he said. “I did MRIs, CT scans, the whole thing. When I found out it was Parkinson’s, there actually was a sense of relief. It was like, ‘OK, I can put a name on this thing now.’”

More than 50,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. It is the 14th leading killer of Americans. An estimated 400 people in the Flathead have the disease.

While there is no cure for the disorder, there have been treatments that have been able to push back symptoms for a period of time, improving quality of life.

Local neurosurgeon Joseph Sramek has performed a procedure called deep brain stimulation on nearly 30 Flathead Valley residents in the past year.

Many of those patients were suffering from Parkinson’s — and the change has been drastic. 

“We had a gentleman who was in the group,” Elli said. “He would just sit there shaking and not say anything. His face was gray and had no emotion. After the [Deep Brain Stimulation] he had color in his face, a big smile. You could swear it was his twin brother.”

While the procedure isn’t a cure but rather “kicking the can down the road,” it is hope for sufferers from Parkinson’s Disease.

April is Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month, and members of the Flathead support group will celebrate “their journey together” with a picnic from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Village Greens Clubhouse.

An all-day seminar will educate Flathead residents in June. The support group is putting on that event and also hosts a singing group that meets at noon on the first and third Thursdays of the month at Snappy Sport Senter. All events are open to the public.

For more information on the support group, call Lois Wagner at 871-3767 or Inga Myers at 756-5514.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.