Mother's Silent Tremors Reveal Hidden Brain Condition After Years

It started so quietly that Dana Mosunic missed it entirely. She didn't notice her right hand shaking just a little when she lifted a glass of water until her 23-year-old daughter, Caitlin, pointed it out. At the time, Dana was 40 and lived in California. She brushed it off. 'I'd just had surgery on my shoulder,' she told the Daily Mail back then. 'And I thought maybe it was nerve damage.'

But by late 2017, other weird things were happening while she walked outside. She glanced at her shadow and saw one arm refusing to swing naturally by her side. Her right foot dragged slightly along the pavement. Behind the wheel of a car, the hamstring in that same leg would tighten without warning. Dana, a mother of two, assumed these glitches were just part of getting older or becoming clumsy. So she kept going about her life for years.

That changed in June 2023. Her primary care doctor finally sent her to see a neurologist. The specialist ordered a brain scan. Dana expected to drive home and wait for the results to come in later. Instead, before she finished that hours-long appointment, the neurologist called back. The imaging showed exactly why she had been feeling strange for so long. At just 45 years old, Dana had Parkinson's disease.

The diagnosis hit right when life should have been brightening up. She was set to marry Eric in three months; he is a police officer who has been her partner for nearly ten years. Her daughters were out of the house and busy with college or building their own lives. Suddenly, she faced a progressive brain disease with no cure yet found.

'It was hard to digest,' Dana said regarding the news. 'Not least because, at that point, I felt healthy.' She admitted there were too many unknowns about how it would affect her life. Sometimes even now, years later, she says she still doesn't feel like she has fully accepted what happened.

The science behind this is clear but harsh. Parkinson's disease starts when cells in a small area of the brain called the substantia nigra begin to die. These specific cells produce dopamine, a chemical messenger essential for coordinating smooth, controlled movement. When dopamine levels drop, the classic symptoms appear: tremors, muscle stiffness, and movement that becomes slow or difficult.

Everyone loses some dopamine-producing cells as they age. But in Parkinson's, that decline happens far too fast. Symptoms usually do not show up until about 50 to 60 percent of those cells are already gone. The numbers are rising sharply. More than 90,000 Americans receive a new diagnosis every year now, roughly 50 percent more than experts thought before. By the year 2030, some 1.2 million people are expected to be living with the disease.

Age remains the biggest risk factor, with most patients diagnosed after turning 60. Yet Dana's case highlights a terrifying shift in how this condition affects younger people. Her story forces scientists and families alike to ask hard questions about why this is happening sooner than ever before. The warning signs she ignored, those small shakes while drinking water or the way her foot dragged, are real clues that many might miss until it is too late.

Genetics plays a part for roughly ten to 20 percent of patients who carry a family history of the disease. Yet Dana sits in a troubling group that experts are increasingly worried about: people developing Parkinson's in their 40s and 50s with no obvious genetic explanation. Scientists increasingly suspect that, for at least some of them, the seeds of the illness were sown decades earlier.

While there is no single proven cause, mounting research has linked Parkinson's to environmental hazards encountered in everyday life – including pesticides and air pollution. The troubling part is that many of these exposures can be difficult to avoid – and the damage may begin years, or even decades, before the first tell-tale tremor appears.

'You're always kind of curious as to, was it chemicals or was I near pollution?' said Dana. 'Did it have something to do with all the popcorn ceilings in elementary school when I was a kid in the 80s? You really just have zero idea, and there's no way to figure that out. It's frustrating.'

This uncertainty has also left Dana worrying about her daughters, Caitlin, 23, and Hailey, 20, and whether they too could one day develop the disease. 'You want to protect your kids,' she said. 'I feel bad because they're going to watch me go through this, and I don't want them to be concerned that this is going to be their future too.'

Dana, pictured above, suffered from tremors, stiffness and foot dragging on the right side of her body, prompting her diagnosis. Just three months after her diagnosis, she married Eric in a small, intimate ceremony in Lake Tahoe. 'It did kind of suck to go into the wedding with that knowledge because the last thing you ever want is to feel like a burden on your partner,' she said. 'But it was one of those things where I thought, "I'm going to deal with this after."'

Once the celebrations were over, that became much harder to do. Dana wanted to know what came next. Could she do anything to slow the disease? How long would it be before it affected both sides of her body – or began to rob her of her ability to walk, talk and carry out everyday tasks independently? But there were few concrete answers.

Unlike many other serious diseases, Parkinson's has no predictable course. Some patients deteriorate relatively quickly, while others continue living independently for decades. And while drugs can control symptoms, there is currently no treatment proven to stop the underlying disease from progressing. 'One of the things I've learned over the past three-plus years is that no one experiences this disease the same way, and we all progress very differently,' Dana said. 'You don't really have a roadmap. It's a lot of talking to doctors and doing your own research.'

So far, Dana's physical symptoms have remained largely confined to the right side of her body, where she experiences tremors and stiffness. But some of the symptoms she finds most difficult are invisible. She suffers bouts of brain fog and, most troublingly, apathy – an overwhelming lack of motivation that she had no idea could be caused by Parkinson's. For Dana, something as simple as putting on a load of laundry can suddenly feel as though it requires more effort than it is worth. 'Apathy was probably my worst one, but I had no idea Parkinson's was linked to apathy,' she said. 'That one just caught me off guard.'

Dopamine does far more than control movement. The potential risk extends beyond physical decline; the invisible mental toll can strip away motivation and independence before a patient even notices their hands shaking. Communities must recognize that environmental factors we cannot easily escape might be the silent drivers of this condition for decades to come.

The brain's reward system relies heavily on motivation, yet when dopamine-producing cells vanish, even everyday chores can feel like an uphill battle. Dana now swallows an antidepressant to lift her spirits and takes a specific mix of drugs called levodopa and carbidopa to replace the chemical her body lost. Levodopa travels through the bloodstream and turns into dopamine once it hits the brain, soothing tremors and stiffness while slowing down movement issues. Carbidopa sits in front, stopping the drug from breaking apart before it arrives at its destination.

She keeps moving too. Regular walks and gym sessions build strength and balance because research shows activity preserves mobility and eases disease symptoms. Experts back this up with a recipe of aerobic work like brisk walking or cycling mixed with lifting weights and agility drills to challenge balance.

'This is such a long road ahead,' Dana said.

She told the Daily Mail that she tackles her diagnosis day by day, while talking to other young patients has shifted her perspective since getting sick. Since the news broke, she started posting on TikTok about living with young-onset Parkinson's and found a crowd of people facing the disease decades earlier than expected. At first, she feared sharing her story publicly would let the illness define who she was. Instead, hearing from others in the same boat made her feel less isolated.

'It's a scary time to get a diagnosis like that because a lot of us have younger families,' she said. 'A lot of us are in the middle of our careers. It's kind of a weird place to be, and it can be really scary.'

Listening to others share their stories helped her gain insight. The more voices speaking out about this condition, the better it gets for everyone involved. Dana is now focused on maximizing whatever moments she still has. She and Eric head to Disneyland regularly with her daughters and his two sons, ages 20 and 16. Those days stand out because she can still walk through the park with little help right now.

She pushes younger patients to adopt this same mindset. 'Don't let it steal the things that you enjoy doing,' she said. 'There are always adjustments you can make to continue doing the things you love, and it's so important to keep those things in your daily life.' She also urges people to build a support system by reaching out to others dealing with the same thing. It helps them feel seen. Do whatever you can not to let it steal your joy in life.