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Hi, I thought I'd introduce myself since I just joined this list. My name is Marie Williamson and my 66 year old father was diagnosed with PD in January of this year. I work in the Office of International Education and Services at the University of Iowa in the United States. I'm also working on my Master's Degree in Higher Education. My mother and I, who are the family members who spend the most time with my father, are concerned about his cognitive difficulties. Medications (forgive me, I'm not familiar with the exact meds yet) are helping his physical symptoms, and the diagnosis itself has helped his emotional state tremendously, but he has difficulties with communication. As a multilingual translator, this problem is perhaps more noticable and more disturbing for him. I was just wondering if other people are familiar with any of the following patters... -> After reading for a few minutes everything looks like squiggles and makes no sense. -> After listening for a few minutes everything sounds like noise and makes no sense. -> Inablility to determine which word to use until he says it out loud, hears it, and ponders whether or not that's the correct one. He says this is especially true for words with similar structure. (This one makes him increaslingly verbal.) -> Difficulty grasping abstract concepts, or changes in conversation topic (even minor ones). It is particularly difficult for us to adjust to this aspect of PD because my father has been an intellectual creature all his life. His professional and personal persuits have focused around his cognitive abilities. I was glad to see the abstracts that John Cottingham posted on cognitive deficit in PD patients and will follow those up. And my father will be thrilled to know he is not alone in this aspect of the disease. Any other leads or words of experience would be appreciated. I think our biggest concern is that perhaps he has some other problem whose diagnosis has not been made, and is being masked by the recent PD diagnosis. Important fact... the doctors say his PD has been caught in the early stages, but that it has probably been creeping up on him for the last 10 years. We see now that some of the problems he was having with translation and fatigue in 1985 might have been because of the beginnings of PD. I have several other areas I'm interested in but will leave it at this for now. I'm glad to have discovered this list! Marie Williamson [log in to unmask]