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Rosemary wrote:

  My worst symptom (according to my neurologist) is tremor of
>the right arm.  To me, my most disabling feature is fatigue/weakness.

>
>         What do others my age (& single) do about their future?  I feel like
>I have no real future because everything has changed.  I have wonderful
>family & friends, but they don't really understand what it is like--and I
>don't expect them to.

Hi Rosemary,

Your letter echoed my sentiments of late, diagnosed 2+ yrs ago at age 43,
now 8 years into PD, also taking low dose sinemet, parlodel, eldypryl, plus
NADH, and totally exhausted. I have had a very successful career for 17
years, raising 2 kids as a single mom. I have been able to juggle 2
businesses, social life, church, having real zest for life. Even my first
years with PD didn't seem to affect my stamina so dramatically, although I
started coming home for a lunchtime nap 5 or so years ago.

I have been systematically cutting back my work load for a year or so, my
husband has closed down his business and taken over much of mine, and not a
moment too soon! After all these years of fighting to keep things "together"
I marvel at how little I care about stuff in the face of this monumental
fatigue. I go from day to day in the eternal hope that the next catnap will
restore me to some semblance of my old self.

I have a feeling that there is no solution for this problem, all my young
onset freinds claim to feel better, and they sure look better after they
finally clean out their desks and downshift into early retirement, which to
us parkys usually means finally doing the 10 million things that work
interfered with! So, for myself I believe it is time to start to lay the
groundwork for that event (retirement). I am finding that I actually look
forward to the time, when for years I have feared it.

I guess the one alternative that occurs to me is to go the fetal transplant
route, which we don't seem to have much testimony about on this list. Maybe
our other new member  Patrik will have some input on this option. I would
really be interested in hearing from any list folks who have been down this
road, there seems to be a great deal of conflict between the claims made for
this method.

Kathie Tollifson
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