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Thirty years ago my first sure symptom of Parkinson's became evident. I had purchased a very misused 1966 Pontiac Tempest "6" 2 door hardtop for $75.00 in October of 1971. It was only five years old and had gone less than 40,000 miles, but very few if any oil changes and sitting parked for several months with a window partly open next to salt water had taken it's toll. During the second week in November 1971, I rebuilt the engine in my back yard and did some body work. I had always been very right handed. While putting the engine back together I discovered that in certain positions I could not put a nut on a bolt with my right hand, but I could with my left. It seemed odd at the time, but I felt I had nothing to worry about. It was about a week before my 39th birthday. Several months later I decided to teach my high school student son how to bowl. At one time I had been a fairly good bowler. I bowled for the Tokheim Twirlers [a Fort Wayne, Indiana team composed mostly of employees of Tokheim Corporation, a manufacturer of gasoline pumps for automobile service stations]. I also bowled in a church league in Memphis. I used to 'throw a pretty good ball.' Bowled with right arm with reverse English. The ball would approach the left gutter, then hook right, and come into the pins between pin 2 and pin 1. When I tried to show him how I threw the ball, I found that I could not time the release. The ball usually went into the left gutter. I bowled three games, breaking 100 only once. To add insult to injury, son's first game was over 150. He bowled two more games. One was about 165 and the other about 225. He then asked what else one did when bowling. He said he thought it was a silly game. I still didn't worry. I used to be a good whistler. I was an admirer of Elmo Tanner, the blind whistler with Ted Weems' orchestra. His rendition of Heartaches is still one of my favorites. Daughter played the flute, and I enjoyed whistling along with my favorite flautist. I found whistling more and more difficult and less fun than it was before. My tonal range was shrinking. I was busy getting my Ph.D. dissertation written, and whistling is not an essential part of life. I still did not worry. In the early 1970's I was making underwriting and safety inspections in businesses for several insurance companies. OSHA was new and most businesses were very glad to have me come through their plants before OSHA. Part of my reports involved making maps of the buildings, etc. I noticed that my hand drawn maps were getting worse. I made many of the measurements by walking and counting my number of steps. I got a Roll-A-Tape when I found that the length my stride was less consistent. My dissertation was about finished, and I was going back into teaching. I did not worry. In the early to mid 1970s America was struggling with air pollution [lead emissions in automobile exhaust was the big enemy] and a shortage of petroleum products. Leaded gasolines were disappearing, and all of the new gasoline powered cars the lean burn engines designed to get better gas mileage on unleaded gasoline. Various new octane raising additives were added to our gasoline to replace the dangerous tetraethyl lead. One popular additive is meta xylene. I found the new smell of automobile exhaust to be extremely noxious. In 1974-1975 I was pleasantly surprised when the automobile engineers and/or the petroleum engineers got the stink out of the exhaust from lean burn engines using unleaded gasoline. I commented on this to several friends and wondered why the oil companies did not brag about the improvement. I was told there were no improvements. I was losing some of my sense of smell. It was an improvement to my quality of life, so, why worry? In the early 1980s my handwriting deteriorated. In my lectures I stressed problem solving, and I used a blackboard. I found that to make my writing legible I needed to use both hands to handle the chalk. I worried. I found it harder and harder to keep my lectures lively. I worried. I always wrote notes to the students when I graded their papers. I found it more and more difficult to write those notes, particularly in limited space. I was worried. I began making tests which the students would have to take online. I was ahead of my time on this. I gave weekly online tests where the students would log on to the university computer and get a "welcome" followed by a listing of tests taken previously, the grades on those tests, and cumulative grade average and rank in class. It would then tell them what general area their next test would cover and ask if they wished to take the test now. A "yes" put them into twenty multiple choice questions which come up in random order. A student could answer or put the question back to answer later. There were always five choices. If a wrong answer is given, the screen would tell them the answer is wrong and probably why the wrong answer was chosen. It will then repeat the question until the right answer is given. With a right answer the screen will tell the student he is right, give an extra bit of information to reinforce the answer to the question, and give the percentage of correct first try answers. At the end of the twenty multiple choice questions, an essay question appears, and they answer at the keyboard. The computer creates a file name to save the test answers. The file name contains the student name, which test was taken, what the grade was for multiple choice, and a dummy space where I can add the grade for the essay. I never figured a way to have the computer grade an essay question. When I open a student's test and print it, I get a statement saying when the test was taken, how long the test took, in what order questions were answered, which questions were answered incorrectly, and the essay answer. The essay is printed double spaced on 18" paper, so there is plenty of room for me to make remarks. I can also insert remarks into the students' essay answer from the keyboard. I thought it was a good system, particularly for fifteen years ago. I wrote in DEC BASIC and compiled. I could write the tests on my Radio Shack Model 1 computer and upload them to the university computer with my 300 baud modem. Most students were afraid of computers back then. Looking back, I am surprised at what I did to work around my yet undiagnosed problem. I knew something was wrong. I tried several doctors, including neurologists, but got nowhere except worse for a considerable number of years. I was worried! Diagnosis finally came on St. Valentine's day, 1991. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn