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My next mail message will be to unsubscribe to this list, not from lack of interest but because it is hard at the moment to read the messages. My father was the one who had Parkinsons and he died Wednesday evening. I shared all the information I gained from here with him and I want to thank everyone for their caring, informative attitude and also for the humor (as shown in the nicotine articles) which touched many of the messages. In the end, it was only partly the Parkinsons that aided my father's death. He also had problems breathing - the specialists explained that his autonomous nervous system simply wasn't working right and that the brain sometimes forgot to tell the brain stem to breathe. This occurred when he was not conscious, when he was conscious he could control it to some degree but often felt short of breath. A week and half ago, he caught a cold that turned into pneumonia; this was enough to push the breathing over the edge and he stopped breathing. My husband performed CPR and he was taken to the hospital. There it was clear that he had to learn to use a bi-pap machine while sleeping - He hated it. He was always a person who wanted to control his destiny. He loved walking and talking to everyone. The Parkinson destroyed the last two and he seemed to feel the bi-pap took the former. When you add gall bladder problems that required an operation that couldn't be performed because of the breathing problems and the fact that he was rapidly approaching the stage where my mother would not be able to care for him, the last 6 months had been miserable for him and no hope was in sight for solving any of the problems. My three sisters each flew in to see him and encourage him and it turns out to say good-bye. Tuesday night he refused the bi-pap. Wednesday morning he went into a coma with total lung failure and in the afternoon he stopped breathing. All the doctors felt he understood what he was doing and that this was a choice he made. It was a very painless way and dignified way to go. I couldn't ask for a better death for him but I, my mother, and my sisters miss him greatly. Thank you all again for all your advice. We've asked everyone who was willing to donate to one of the Parkinsons' societies in his name. I wish all of you the best of luck and hope the day a "cure" for Parkinsons exists comes quickly. _Lauri Rathmann ([log in to unmask])