Redefining Victory: Fighting Back

(gentle music) - I was usually very aware of my where I was in the space.

I started to bump my elbows against things that didn't normally happen.

- My right leg just started wobbling up and down, up and down.

- I knew that something was wrong, but I didn't know what.

I started to see the changes in my body, which was shaking of the right hand.

So tremor, slight tremor.

- It feels like all of a sudden you're drunk.

- It's easy to ignore it at first.

- People usually say, why me?

You know, like I never said that, why me?

- I think I speak for all of us.

It's gnawing at us every minute of every day.

- By lunchtime, you feel like you want to go to bed and stay there.

- For every month and every week and every year that goes by, for me, I'm closer to the end.

Which is, doesn't sound like such a bad thing these days.

- Nobody dies because of Parkinson's.

They die with Parkinson's.

- It's not a fight that you're going to win, but it's not a fight that you have to lose either.

(gentle music continues) (upbeat music) (crowd cheers) - Nenad Bach.

- Nenad Bach.

- Nenad Bach, this man is a superstar in his world.

- What he does have is a passion.

- Performing for huge crowds with some of the most famous people on the planet.

- There are no words to describe, actually.

how I feel when I play music.

I'm connected with everything.

My name is Nenad Bach, let's rock and roll.

(rock music) - After I left, the 23rd Detective Squad as a trainee, went to a few different assignments until I turned 21 and I became a full fledged patrolman with a gun and a shield.

I wound up becoming a detective in the DA squad, probably the highest level assignment you could get as a detective in the New York City Police Department.

(gentle music) - In the last several years of my career, I was the chief medical examiner of Rockland County, New York.

We are very much part of the team of legal people who decide whether someone goes to jail, perhaps for the rest of their lives, or they go free.

We do what it takes to study the dead for the benefit of the living.

It's an obligation, and it's an honor to to be called as an expert and to be part of that process.

(lively music) - I was born into the pizza business.

It's the only job I've ever had.

It's the only job I ever really, really wanted.

- John can do anything in our industry You know, when it comes to pizza, he's a man of many styles and talents.

- John Arena, third generation pizza chef with over 48 years of experience.

- A world pizza champion.

- Owner and co-founder of Metro Pizza, a pizzeria with seven successful locations.

- Selected as one of the top ten pizzerias in America.

- Featured in "Everybody Loves Pizza", "Entertainment Tonight" and "Chopped".

John is probably the patron saint of pizza and probably the most humble supporter of the industry and independent pizzerias in general.

- Guinness World Record holder and the 50 Top Pizza Icon award.

- John Arena, a "Chopped" finalist.

- 50 years of experience and love of pizza.

How can I lose?

You have a responsibility of legacy.

A responsibility of who carries on this craft after we're done.

(lively music continues) (Gentle music) - I'm a composer, singer, songwriter, producer, civil engineer, and peace activist.

But music was my passion.

The rock and roll bug bit me.

When I started to write music and something grabbed me emotionally.

I was connected with the music.

I could play one note for an hour.

It's like a contact with divine.

I'm just immersed into it.

(lively music) When I wanted to see America.

and live in America.

I came here, I didn't talk about it.

I'm doer, not just talker.

I didn't want to wake up when I'm 50 and then regret that I never tried.

So I said, I'm going to try.

I'm going to do my best.

The biggest one was Woodstock.

Half a million people.

And this is the first time I felt after performance that I can levitate and feeling that people are paying attention because there was a war in my country, Croatia.

So I wanted to bring attention to the peace in the world.

Talking to my father in the stars and the rain Oh yeah.

- [Lone] I come from Denmark, became a medical doctor, in internal medicine physician, before moving to New York in 1980.

I served as a forensic pathologist and associate medical examiner.

I have always been able to work out in a situation where I got to do what I needed to do to feel comfortable to certify the case.

(lively music) - I was born into pizza.

My dad was a pizza maker.

My uncles were pizza makers, my aunts, my mom.

Everybody worked in the family pizzeria.

The essence of pizza for me is community.

Every pizza has a wonderful story to tell.

Every pizza tells you something about the person that made that pizza.

The enjoyment of pizza is always linked to community, family, friends.

Pizza itself became my community and the other pizza makers became my community.

There's this kind of support network of pizza makers all over the world that's like a fellowship.

In the pizza community, I'm not going to say there isn't competition because there's anywhere where there's pride, and a little bit of ego theres going to be some competition.

But mostly what there are is colleagues, people that have faced the same hardships, the same challenges, the same obstacles.

(lively music continues) - [Police Radio ] 10-13, 10-13, 42nd and Park Avenue.

Shots fired.

Officer down.

- We followed a guy from Long Island City into Manhattan.

It was an organized crime labor racketeering case.

So we come out of Vanderbilt Street, turn onto Park Avenue South, and we come across a uniformed cop who's running down the street, and he's got his radio up and he's hollering into the radio.

What do you got?

He says, "I got a bank robber, and there he is".

I take the lead in the chase, and I chase this guy right into Grand Central Station.

There's an elliptical bank of doors on the corner, and behind those doors is a ramp that goes down into the station proper.

I hit the doors right behind this guy, anticipating he was beyond the ramp.

He wasn't on the ramp.

I turned the corner and, he was in a combat stance.

To this day, I can see the bullet coming out of the barrel of the gun.

I can't hear it.

I can see it, though.

It's in super slo-mo and my life changed in an instant.

I wound up in Bellevue Hospital, seriously wounded for quite some time, and then went on and I developed PTSD and that ultimately ended my career.

And here I am now today.

I was a gym guy for years and years and years from the time I was in my early 50s.

I would be at the gym every other day for full workouts, lifting heavy weights, doing all kinds of bodybuilding exercises.

And one day, uh, some, as I'm leaving the locker room, somebody comes up behind me who I didn't know said, excuse me, "can I ask you a personal question?"

Yeah, sure.

Why not?

Said, do you have Parkinson's disease?

I was, Why?

- I was, um, in my, condominium in Florida on a brief vacation.

When I noticed that my the sandals I was wearing.

They got caught on the toe of them, got caught on the carpeting.

So I said to myself, that's strange, what's going on here?

But I thought, well, whatever, it's maybe the carpeting.

I'm not familiar with this, and it's maybe, you know, nothing.

- I started to experience some of the telltale signs.

Broken sleep patterns, diminished sense of smell, which is crucial to working in a kitchen.

And I started to drag my feet a little bit.

I started to get tired at times when I normally wouldn't get tired.

- I felt something, tremor in the right hand, slight tremor.

But I went to doctor and nobody could recognize anything.

But I knew it was more than that.

- I was lucky enough to get set up with Director of Movement Disorders, and he took a split look at me walking down the hallway, and he said, you got Parkinson's.

It took him no more than 10 seconds.

There it was, a dreadful diagnosis.

The first thing that came into my mind was like, um.

Oh no, oh no, dear God.

- In 2010, they diagnosed me with Parkinson.

At first, I thought it could be worse.

People lived with Parkinson.

But it's difficult life.

But they live, so it's not to me a death sentence, you know.

- I finally broke down and went to a neurologist, and he examined me for a few minutes and he said, well, what do you think you've got?

And I said, I think I've got Parkinson's.

And he said, I think you're right.

- I went to the neurologist, sure enough, they put me through the exam and said, you have Parkinson's disease.

I didn't know much about it at all.

I did a little reading online and saw what it was about and said, well, geez, I don't know what's going to happen.

- So Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative condition that's due to the loss of neurons that produce a chemical, or specifically a neurotransmitter called dopamine.

- Parkinson's disease is diagnosed clinically.

The gold standard of making a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease is based on the so-called clinical diagnostic criteria.

You have to look for certain signs, such as tremor, slowness of motion, and there's a standardized way to go about that.

- Patients manifest symptoms such as slowing of their movements, tremor, limb rigidity or stiffness, and a shuffling gait.

- I wind up with a situation where if I've been seated for a while and I get up to walk someplace, it feels like all of a sudden you're drunk.

You're wobbly, you can't walk.

You don't want to walk another pace because you're afraid to fall down.

You feel like you're going to fall down.

That's the worst of it.

- It is a progressive condition and has over time, these patients can see deterioration in their overall mobility as well as other what we call non-motor symptoms such as sleep disorders, constipation, loss of taste and smell, blood pressure changes, and even cognitive changes.

- I started to bump my elbows against things that didn't normally happen.

I started to drag my feet a little bit.

I started to get tired at times when I normally wouldn't get tired.

Losing your sense of smell is a big challenge for somebody that cooks for a living, so I had to deliberately lift things to my to my face and inhale them and be more conscious of it.

- With Parkinson, you have you're unhealthy.

You have to remember all the time.

You're not healthy.

If I exercise too hard for an hour in a boxing ring or whatever, then I get almost sick, afterwards I get weak.

And that weakness is the dangerous one.

- I couldn't play syncopation on the guitar.

Syncopation was impossible.

And then there is song that I wanted to play.

I just couldn't.

And that was devastating, to say the least.

You know, because guitar is a friend, loyal friend.

So to lose that was difficult.

- The most common, uh, psychological psychiatric disorder associated with Parkinson's disease is depression.

Anxiety is there as well.

- That's the problem with Parkinson.

Because we don't want to show our vulnerability.

So we shake on our own.

We don't want to go to restaurant and everything flies.

The salad flies around.

It's embarrassing.

- I got very depressed and that this happened to me.

It really took a toll on me.

Out of worry, simple worry.

- You can wake up in the morning, feel like Superman and by lunchtime you feel like you want to go to bed and stay there.

- Sometimes people with Parkinson's disease have difficulties with memory.

It's not necessarily that they're losing memories like a patient with Alzheimer's would, but they're having difficulties getting the information when they need it.

- If you have a memory like mine, everyday is really a fresh day because I can't even remember how I got here today.

- It is a reminder that I have to be extra careful in everything I do, whether it's in the kitchen where I tend to forget.

Now my memory is not so good.

I can forget a pot on the stove till it burns.

And that's dangerous.

- We don't really consider it a single person's disorder, but really a disorder of the system.

Mostly the family.

- It's important for family members to be very engaged to motivate them, to give them the kind of emotional and physical support that they need.

- It's always important to recognize that you're not alone, and also recognize your responsibility and accountability to help other people when you find something that works.

- It doesn't have to cost them a lifetime of quality of life.

These people should be able to live robust, active, productive lives with the right treatments, with the right care team, and with the right lifestyle changes.

- My message always tries to capture optimism in some way, emphasizing the things that we can do, emphasizing that we have so many very effective treatments that have been developed.

- We need to get patients to understand what this is, and start to tailor and build that treatment plan around their symptoms and what they want for their life.

- Right from the beginning, I don't know if I was just naive or wishful thinking, or maybe being in the restaurant business makes you an optimist in general.

I just kind of said, "okay, I've got Parkinson's, so what"?

Everybody's got something.

(rock music) - I wound up with the Rock Steady program, which I credit for keeping me in better shape over the last three years than I would have been had I not done anything.

Rock Steady Boxing is about harnessing your balance, your flexibility, your mobility, your cognitive ability to remember instructions.

- A victory can be making it through class.

A victory can be, you know, not taking breaks.

It can be remembering the combination that we're doing.

It could be standing on one leg for 20 seconds versus 15 last week.

And we always tell them just showing up is a win.

- It's a serious workout.

I know I need it, I know what I feel like when the workout is over.

I know what I feel like when it starts.

When it starts, I don't even want to be there.

But when it's over, I feel more human.

I know I still have Parkinson's, but I feel more like myself.

I felt like I kept a lid on a disease.

I'm going to a shooting range, which is kind of interesting because with Parkinson's you think that was not possible.

But an interesting thing happens.

I have no tremor when I shoot.

I've been a shooter for my whole career as a detective, and I shoot pretty, pretty well, actually.

I've had the range officer say, not bad for an old guy.

I kind of look forward to going.

Yet I have a little anxiety, you know, hopefully that it's holding together and I can still do what I really love to do.

So it's one of the reasons why I come out and I do it.

And I'm hoping that people understand.

You may have certain limitations, but there are other things that are untouched by Parkinson's.

You need to find out what they are.

You have to figure out what you can do, what you can't do, and try and live your life according to that.

(lively music) - By divine intervention, a friend invited me to this club, which is a table tennis club.

We played for an hour and a half.

Next day I felt like 50% better.

Like a miracle.

So I said, this is not coincidence.

There is something here.

So I increased my playing to 2 to 3 times a week.

And after three, four, five months, I could play syncopation again.

Which was, you know, I reversed the symptom.

So this was something unheard of before.

- Numerous studies have shown that vigorous exercising does yield less disability over time.

- It's referred to as neuronal plasticity.

And certainly exercise and being at it, doing some skillful movement and practicing certainly affects that and does that.

(upbeat music) - I had participated other forms of martial art my whole life.

When I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, I wanted to do something was familiar enough to me, but also different enough that I had to learn a new skill.

And we have many different movements in Parkinson's treatment.

In a boxing class, for example, the one that's been the biggest challenge for me has definitely been the ladder because of the type of stepping, the lateral movement, the coordination of your feet and doing it on command.

- What I tell most people when they come in, they've already made a 50% decision to actually come into the gym.

That's literally half the battle.

So with boxing, it's like the perfect bridging of the gap.

It's movement, it's dexterity, it's hand-eye coordination.

So basically using all those variables in boxing to help a person who has Parkinson's to be able to regress a lot of those symptoms.

- Any type of movement, whether it's boxing, walking, bowling, making pizzas, it's always easier when you're moving to a beat metronome that's in your head.

Moving to music, it's the heartbeat of life.

- My neurologist in the city, his advice was that I signed up for boxing, and so that made me make the call.

And I got started as I think our coaches second patient.

- Everybody there is a cheerleader, everybody is cheering you on, complimenting you on what you're, "oh man that was a great punch".

"Wow, look at that bag swing."

Doesn't matter what condition you're in.

- They're among people who are willing to do anything they can to fight the disease.

And that's important.

- Getting patients on a fitness program is paramount to keeping this disease at bay.

- I think it's always important for Parkinson's patients and people with neurological disorders in general challenge themselves almost to the point of failing.

Approaching that point is going to create new neurological pathways and new opportunities.

- Playing ping pong for me means freedom.

Free of past, free of future.

So I said to myself, if it helped me, why not others who have the same issues?

So we formed a small group of people, A small team of four of us.

I started Ping Pong Parkinson.

A non-for-profit organization.

They come like bogged down.

Can barely move, and then suddenly you start to play ping pong and they are smiling.

They are running around like like children, you know, you have to see the smiles of these people.

We are in 25 countries and over 300 chapters, so it's worldwide.

Our goal is to help people now, Not in two weeks, not in a month, not in a year, now.

(lively music) - The John Arena Foundation was formed out of an idea from one of my best friends in the industry, Tony Gemignani, a giant in the pizza industry always thinking outside the box.

- Tony Gemignani came to the board of the World Pizza Champion team and said that he had an idea for a foundation.

- Tony had this idea that we could use pizza making to enhance the lives of Parkinson's patients.

- John had a keynote.

It was moving, it was touching.

He told the story of his father growing up.

He told the story of Muhammad Ali being his idol.

- When I was a kid, I really loved Muhammad Ali.

Magnificent boxer, giant personality, tall, handsome, funny.

You can see the connection, right?

(audience laughs) No, not so much.

I love Muhammad Ali, but I didn't have much in common with Muhammad Ali until about ten years ago.

- When it comes to his idol growing up, who would have thought that he would have got what his idol got, was Parkinson's?

- I wanted to do some things, post Parkinson's diagnosis that Parkinson's patients could look at and say, "That's not the end of the world".

"That guy's out there still working."

- And so I said to myself, you know, why don't we really look at doing the John Arena Foundation?

- We talked about it and I said, yeah, I do want to create a foundation, but I want it to be something that helps people now.

- John didn't want people who were diagnosed with Parkinson's to be alone in their house alone.

And so it's something that they could do with their family, with community.

And so pizza was the food that we thought would encourage people to get them out.

And amongst others.

- I wanted to be involved in something that gave people the same thing that pizza making gave me activity, stimulation, a sense of a sense of self-worth.

So we created the John Arena Foundation to create culinary experiences that Parkinson's patients could participate in.

- So we're doing a pizza class with Parkinson's patients today.

So this is really what the mission of the foundation is to bring a group of patients together, learn a new skill, hopefully go home and be excited about making pizza with their family and their friends.

For the Parkinson's community, it's really cool and that he has the perspective that he's able to teach us.

- John has taught me a lot about how everyone out there is there to help each other out.

And so when it came time for John to need a hand, it's not a surprise that nobody flinched.

I didn't call one person who said, oh, you know what, I don't really like him that much or I'm busy that night, literally every single person said, you tell me the time and I'll be there.

- It's the pizza people.

They're warm, generous, amazing people that want to give back.

- I hope the John Arena Foundation brings hope to people who are diagnosed with Parkinson's, because it is a dark place when you know that there really isn't a cure.

- Everyone in their own way to be able to give back.

It'll live forever.

- I was fishing around for a job here, there and everywhere.

Then I found an ad in the New York Times.

If you remember correctly, the byline was, "I found it in the times".

Well, I found it in the times.

It was a small little mailing house in Bethpage, two storefronts, three little old ladies in the back room stuffing envelopes.

And me.

That's 1992.

And here we are in 2025.

I now run a fully integrated marketing company, it's been a hell of a ride.

All my people here at work know I have Parkinson's.

They know that I get very tired during the day.

I may close my office door and take 20 minutes to regroup.

Nobody seems to hold it against me.

Success is keeping it at bay for not allowing the symptoms to rule my day.

- They have to live in the now.

They have to use this disease as as an opportunity to focus on their bodies and to focus on their overall health on a daily basis.

- Well, maybe there is a lesson to be learned, and that is we're not done even at 71.

I'm not done getting better at handling myself, which is one of the most difficult things in the world.

Right?

That's to handle your own emotions and to to work through them.

- One thing that we didn't conquer Parkinson, but we conquered the fear of Parkinson.

So that's a big one.

- Maybe I have Parkinson's for a reason.

Maybe I have Parkinson's as an opportunity to lend a helping hand to somebody else.

- I call it Parkinson, not Parkinson's, because there is no apostrophe s. It doesn't possess me.

- Don't let the disease in.

Keep it at bay.

Do the best you can to fight against it.

Keep yourself moving.

Keep doing things that give you pleasure and are positive.

- And look for that nice steak or glass of wine at the end of the day and say, hey, let me sit down with good friends and have a laugh and have a talk and find my way.

- When you're diagnosed with Parkinson's, answer that bell, step into the ring and punch it right in the face.

You'll feel better about it.

And Parkinson's gets put on its heels every time you don't let Parkinson's rob you of something that you love to do.

- Be happy every morning.

Excited about life.

Inhale life.

and enjoy.

I find beauty in everything.

So, and if you show that to others, they are also capable to do that.

- What do you really have to do when you're faced with Parkinson's, or any challenge of that sort that is degenerative and incurable is you have to redefine what winning is.

(lively guitar music) If I had another life If I had another life (lively music)