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Dear Robert Naylor, You wrote: > I had spent much of my working life in research and I had a >Parkinsonian that I could observe every minute of a the day. Perhaps I >could find something missed by others who only see their research subjects >at discreet intervals. It was exciting and encouraging to read about your research and your hopefulness. It's going to be interesting to hear the details of your approach. With no real scientific background, I've been designing an "experiment" on myself. I have what Pete and Gin Morgan jokingly referred to as "John Wayne syndrome": a tendency to be so stoical that I ignore problems in order to present a brave front. The result is that there's nothing to discuss at my annual appointments with my neurologist since all I can tell her is that I'm "O.K. -- no big changes." I'm in the Propath program, but it's so general I don't find it useful. It should be simple enough to gather facts on my own. The "experiment" was to report into a micro-cassette recorder every hour on the hour, answering very briefly how I'm feeling, what movements are not "normal" at that moment, whether or not there's any pain, and what my mood is: "9am, stiff right neck and shoulder, twisting right leg, pain in cramping right foot, feeling blue." I kept records of all the embarrassing stuff too: bowels, periods, weight, blood pressure, sweat and tears. So that the conditions of each day would be the same, I made up a daily checklist of what I considered "basic": drugs and vitamins taken on schedule, lights-out no later than midnight, 8 glasses of water, 6 fruits & vegetables, fresh carrot juice, 20 minutes of aerobics or muscle toning, one long set of Tai Chi, singing, at least one hug or equivalent &/or bellylaugh.... (sounds rather Spartan compared to actor Tony Randall's description of a perfect day: go to the opera, make love, dinner at a French restaurant ...) In other words, it turned into an optimum-day list rather than a basic-day list, so I practically didn't have time to do anything else. It's no surprise that I haven't been able to stick with the "experiment" more than two or three days at a stretch, and so haven't accumulated enough records to be able to see any patterns. I'm looking forward to hearing what you and your wife have discovered. Any advice or reactions to my amateur data gathering would be very much appreciated. Thank you, Mary Yost age 47, diagnosed 10/90, foolishly working considerably more than full time, 25/100 sinemet x 2; 5mg eldepryl x 2, etc.