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Dear Dr. Beverly: Felicitations on your accomplishments! You did well and with your attitude you should not worry and moreover you should be able to help others less fortunate. As you might have read or heard, PD is a designer disease that afflicts different people in different ways. In most cases that I know of young onsets such as you Pd is slow in progressing and may not necessarily be debilitating; but then I also know some who have terrible dyskinesias that rob them of quasi normal functions. I have also known wonderful people who were afflicted at about the same time my wife was in 1989, who are no longer around but they were mostly in their 70's. You are lucky YOU will have a cure within a few years. Long life to you Beverly, you are a winner and we need you. Michel Margosis 'Carpe Diem' > Beverly Forte wrote: > > After my diagnosis of PD in 1992 at the age of 41, I read enough about the illness to understand what I would be dealing with but did not buy into the rate of progression predicted. I have done very well these 8 years, especially as a single parent, self-employed writer. I even finished a Ph.D. in psychology during this time. My interest is renewed in finding out how others have progressed after diagnosis. I want to locate a database, if it exists, of actual progression of indiviuals not projections by doctors. Also, PD patients have such a variety of clusters of symptoms, I would like to find information showing the differences in actual progression by these subgroups. My symptoms are mainly muscle rigidity without tremor. I am disturbed by doctors singing doom and gloom when many can have joyful, poductive lives like I have. Had I beleived the initial picture, I would have given up long ago. There is much hope to be shared. > >