Illness
Starting about 1990, Gibson started to experience the symptoms of an illness that would not be diagnosed until four years later. Loss of balance and falling backwards were among Gibson's first symptoms. Later, his vision and then his voice were affected. Doctors throughout the country were unsuccessful in diagnosing or treating him. In 1994 he entered the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida where he was diagnosed with Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). With only 20,000 people in the United States with PSP, there was very little research money available for study of the disease. Bob moved from "my favorite place to live (Gibson, page 211)" to Portland, Oregon where some research was being done on PSP.
Failing from his illness, Gibson invited many of his friends to a farewell concert on September 20, 1996 in Chicago. His letter to his friends included this paragraph.
"This may be the last chance I have to see many of you. I am finding it increasingly difficult to do the simplest things and traveling is really a challenge. I won't be able to play and sing with you, but I'm really looking forward to being an audience of one!"
The concert was held. Gibson tired early, struggled to rise and say goodnight, and received a standing ovation. One week later, on September 28, 1996, Gibson died at the home of his daughter, Susan, in Portland, Oregon.
Read more about this topic: Bob Gibson (musician)
Famous quotes containing the word illness:
“Thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The more I read and the more I talked to other parents of children with disabilities and normal children, the more I found that feelings and emotions about children are very much the same in all families. The accident of illness or disability serves only to intensify feelings and emotions, not to change them.”
—Judith Weatherly (20th century)
“Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)