WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. -- More than 9,000 people in Western New York are living with Parkinson's Disease.  When you take into account family, friends, and caregivers of patients, that's potentially tens of thousands of people affected, but despite this, some feel there's still a lot of work to go raising awareness.

For David Wolf, it started as a twitch in his arm.  Robert Russell said the stiff way he sat at one of his wife's appointments caught a doctor's attention. Neither expected a diagnosis of Parkinson's.

"Zero. Had no concept what Parkinson's was, anything about it," said Wolf, who was diagnosed eight years ago.

"Most people think of Michael J. Fox and the tremors and the shaking and everything else,” said Russell, who’s been living with the disease for about a decade. “They don't realize what the other symptoms are."

This despite the fact that Western New York has one of the nation's highest rates of Parkinson's, according to a study by the Washington University School of Medicine.

"There are so many more patients that have diabetes, that have cancer, that have Alzheimer's, and so those diseases, just through conversation, I think, get more awareness," said Christopher Jamele, executive director of the National Parkinson Foundation Western New York.

That's part of the reason during April, National Parkinson's Awareness Month, landmarks like the Peace Bridge will be lit up blue in honor of the cause. It's also a time to raise awareness about the organization itself and the resources it connects patients with.

"There's so little information out there about it, people think they have to go it alone, so when they come into the support groups, if we can get them into the door, we can help them out," said Wolf.

Jamele said the past year has seen promising advances.  More calls have been coming in, which is a sign that attention is growing, and a drug called Duopa was approved to deliver medicine into patients' systems in a new way to help better control Parkinson's symptoms.

One of the most common misconceptions advocates would like to see cleared up is what a diagnosis means.