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Greetings everyone: As of a few days ago, I am a new member of this forum. First off, I should add to the choir by saying thanks to all involved. Knowledge and understanding are power, and it helps to hear from others. My father, 62, was recently diagnosed as probably having PD. For more than 20 years he has had a benign tremor, but the shaking got worse in the last year, and his neurologist is leaning toward id of the onset of PD. This is all very new to me and my brother and sister, and at this stage we are trying to learn more about how it might affect him, while still trying not to get caught up in gloomy predictions. If you all would like to comment, I have two queries: First, as my father described to me, based on what his neurologist told him, there may be two forms of PD: one more mild than the other. In other words, what I've been told is that although the condition tends to be progressive, the prognosis will be better for one type of PD than the other. Is there any basis for this? Or is PD expressed more as a broad range of symptoms? My second concern is less well defined. It centers on the issue that my father is not always so communicative. Sometimes it is difficult to discuss sensitive issues with him, although lately, with this issue, he has been very open. Anyway, my brother and I have thought that perhaps we should not let on to him that we are trying to learn as much as possible about PD, that we are concerned about it. This isn't coming across quite right, but we don't want him to think that we view him as a victim, or that we are focussing on it at the detriment of other aspects of our relation- ship. Since he might not discuss with us his concerns, we can't be guaranteed that he might think we are fixating too much on "what might happen" rather than "what is happening". Any comments? My own thoughts are to try and keep everything in perspective with how it is affecting him now, with some thought for the future, and to be as open as possible with him. ... . These thoughts aside for now, I should say that I am learning a great deaal from the many messages sent to the listserver over the last several months. I encourage new members to check out the old messages by using the listserver's get command. An easier means, however, is to ftp (or "fetch" or telnet) to vm.utcc.utoronto.ca /ANONYMOU.301. I've got several more hours of reading through the messages to catch up to the present -- lots of useful, thought-provoking information. Thanks again, and best regards, Bill Manley [log in to unmask]