Mrs Andrews, author of Positively Parkinson's, says the books available were about people in the last stages of Parkinson's who couldn't move and had to rely on other people for the most basic of things. "It was scary," she says.
There is so little known about Parkinson's. Diagnosis is made - not through blood tests or x-rays - but through a series of movements while the doctor observes.
"You spend the first six months in denial: 'Why should I believe him? He only did these things to me. He didn't take a blood test. He didn't do an x-ray ...' But he can't. So it's the acceptance that is quite difficult."
Rather than spend the rest of her life worrying, Mrs Andrews says there are things one can do.
"The question that you ask yourself most is that question, 'What's my future?' as well as 'What's going to happen to me?'
"Independence is really important, from an emotional point and a physical point of view."
She found out she is not entirely helpless. "The more you do for yourself, the more exercise you do, the more determined and bloody-minded you are, the better chance you've got," she says.
Mrs Andrews, a researcher for documentaries and films, says she couldn't have written the book in the first few years she spent coping with the disease.
"It was just too personal," she says.
Although she's the central character, she says the book is not all about her. She interviewed several people with the disease, discussing their experiences and how they coped with it.
She says many people take years to absorb the diagnosis.
"The oddest thing about Parkinson's is that when you are first told you've got it, you have no idea what it's going to do. So you spend a lot of time in the first six months or a year thinking it's all downhill from now on," she says.
"And then the year passes, you find nothing has changed from the year before."
Who's at risk?
Through her research, Ann Andrews found:
The most vulnerable occupations are doctors, dentists, teachers, lawyers, scientists, computer programmers, agricultural workers, hunters and foresters.
The greatest incidence of the disease among races is among Latinos, followed by whites and Asians. Africans have the lowest rate.
The Amish of Nebraska have a greater incidence of Parkinson's than any other community.