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This is Thanksgiving in the US. The one holiday were friends and family gather to give thanks for friendship, caring about one another and for accepting us. This is a wonderful opportunity for those of us with PD to thank the one or more care givers in our life for all they do for us. And I might add for all they give up because of us. Just to say Thank you with our masked faces may not be accepted in the true way we mean it. Try writing a message and putting it on the refrigerator door. Or maybe, put the message on their pillow. Who knows where that may lead. To those concerned about a bitchy spouse. This is one who is always berating the parkinsonian about how to live with PD. It is a becoming a well known fact that the initial stimulus be it audio, visual, smell, feeling, taste may be confused and not understood in the PD patient. Often the parkinsonian asks that you repeat because of this problem. If you say, We all love you, Dad. He may not understand the We all and only understand love you, Dad. His response may ask for it to be repeated or he may ignore you. It would be better if you said, Dad Dad, we all love you. The first Dad is lost in confused noise, but the second Dad comes through bright and clear. Try it and see what happens. Thus tell your bitchy spouse that her constant needling is probably not understood so it is wasted. Also older people have a way of not hearing what they do not want to hear. It must be something learned with age. Yesterday on NBC there was a news short on memory . They tested a young person and an elderly person of equal mental acuity to see how they would remember 16 words. The candidates were in a PET scanner so that researchers could see where the brain activity was. The young person remembered all 16 and the location of mental activity was in the frontal lobe. The elderly person only remembered about 5 and the location of mental activity was in the back of the head in the visual part of the brain. This was said that young people assemble information and catalog it in the frontal lobe. Elderly peopl e try to remember what they saw and try to bring up a picture. In PD there is a dopamine deficiency in visual as well as in the substantia nigra. Finally to the lady whose heart was breaking seeing her Dad try to do projects now that were easy in the past. I think this is a wonderful opportunity to join with your Dad and help him. I do not want you to ask if you can be of help and I do not want you to take over the task your Dad is attempting. What you should try to do is to supplement your Dad s inability and participate in what he is attempting. Ask him why he puts a part where he does. Become involved in what he is doing. Ask him to show you how he does it. Now he will become the teacher and forget he has PD. Your gain is tremendous. You are spending quality time with a very important person in your life. Happy Thanksgiving to you all, Alan Bonander ([log in to unmask])