Scanlan: Fighting back, with fists, against Parkinson's disease

Doug Merriam used to rely on his hands to sweetly pick out notes on his acoustic guitar.
Today, his hands are clenched and wrapped inside a boxing glove, used to punch a bag, sometimes with a boxer’s ferocity.
“I try to think that every punch slows down the progress of Parkinson’s,” Merriam says during a session at Boxing 4 Health. “I get angry. I get mad that I have this disease and I tend to punch harder.”
This from a gentle soul of 72, now retired from a ca