I've been doing sporadic research on PD for about the past year, but decided
to get serious about it by searching out the best PD sites and subscribing
to this and the CARE lists.

My mom, who is now 79, was diagnosed by our family doctor with PD about a
year ago.  Looking back, we can see the signs over several years, although
Mom has some arthitis and osteoprosis and hearing loss which masked the
slowness of movement, bad balance, shuffling steps, and blank expression.
We thought her problems with constipation was due to the slowness of
movement and intake of iron from anemia which she has suffered from for
about ten years.

Anyway, on her 77th birthday Mom had a bad fall in her bedroom and spent
several hours trying to get up on her own before calling me, and since then
her left shoulder and arm have been pretty much useless, although only a rib
was broken in the fall.  Two weeks before her 78th birthday over one weekend
(after a couple of other falls) she lost the ability to get out of bed by
herself and since then we have had caregivers with her during the day and me
to sleep with her at night--she has lived in our house for several years.
She spent a few days in the hospital after she first became weak, which is
when I heard the term Parkinsons, and was started on some heart medicine,
stool softeners, arthitis pills, and acid controllers.

Our family doctor has discouraged me from taking her to a nuerologist and
starting her on any Parkinsons medicines.  Mom only shakes when she gets
really tired or upset, but has a lot of rigidity.  The doctor feels she will
need the medicine as some of the other symptoms occur--shaking, difficulty
swallowing, further loss of movement--and if she starts now the side effects
will be bad and she will also build a tolerance to the medicines.  We've had
the physical therapists from the homecare agency a few times, but they leave
after Mom gets to a plateau.

Last week Mom had her 79th birthday.  Mom's depressed, not getting better
but not really getting much worse.  She hardly ever gets dressed, and its
hard to get her to walk between the rooms of our house.  We have had some
problems with bedsores where her spine curves high on her back, and had one
scare with shingles, which were quickly treated.  Lately she has had some
trouble with her eyes, and reading romance novels has been her chief
pleasure for several years.  Mom's not much for doctoring, and we had a
pretty poor experience with an orthopedic doctor (who probably should have
spotted the Parkinsons) who gave her a couple of cortisone shots after she
hurt her shoulder and only saw her as two bad knees and a bad shoulder.

What should we do??  I want to take her to a neurologist--the nearest large
city to me is Evansville, IN, where I hear there are several good doctors,
including a Dr. Pain--what a name--but I don't want to put her through tests
and medicines that won't do much good.  From reading some PD articles
on-line it sounds like Mom is pretty far along on the standard scales of
disability, and has a non-shaking form of the disease, which makes waiting
for tremors to star a moot point.  Her system is pretty sensitive--she can't
eat a lot of vegetables and fruit, and I don't know what she can tolerate
since the PD diet is the exact opposite of what she has eaten for years.

I don't know what I can contribute to this list, but hope to learn a lot
from the rest of you.  Thanks for your patience.

Cindy Birk Conley
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>From Southeastern Illinois to your modem!!
>>http://www.midwest.net/scribers/cbconly