Program helps rural Coloradans move past health barriers
There is nowhere Mark Davis would rather live than the mountains of Colorado.
Now 60 years old, Davis is a carpenter who specialized in remodeling houses in the Front Range and, later, in Grand County. For nearly 10 years, he lived near Grand Lake in an apartment with his dog, Patches. But in his 50s, he began noticing that he had less control over his muscles and his speech. Davis was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a disorder of the nervous system. “The tremors were getting worse,” he said. “Your whole body gets tired.”
Over time, his deteriorating muscle control made it nearly impossible to ride his bicycle or drive around, let alone do his work. “I can’t drive at all now,” he said.
Having lost his primary source of income, Davis didn’t have insurance to support his medical care, and without it, just one of the medications he needed to manage his Parkinson’s cost hundreds of dollars a month. For a person living alone and without insurance, the situation wasn’t easy.
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