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Have never been much of a boxing fan but Muhammud Ali was and is still the GREATIST......!! He and I share a common problem: his is called "Parkinson's Syndrome"- in his case the cause of the problem is known- repeated head trauma. Mine is Parkinson's Disease(PD)-at this time still an unknown pathologic process that robs my brain of a critical chemical that lets the brain send all the "movement messages" from my head to my toes! Enough detail, the result is the same, great difficulty in walking, talking(voice gets very low), simple tasks with hands, often an unconrollable tremor, or a total freeze up, where I become literally locked in place for seconds, sometimes minutes. Often though of as an "old folks" problem(indeed it does statistically strike most often late in life, but it hit me in my mid 30's, and now at age 49(just a tad younger than "The Greatist") I am unable to work. And there are thousands of active middle-age folk who share my problem, and as the Boomers start moving into their 5th-8th decades, sadly the PD list will grow only longer. While luckily there are good drugs that can usually give younger PD victims a 5-10 yr reprieve on the worst aspects of the illness, in time we spend more and more of our day in a state like we saw the CHAMP Friday night. Stooped posture, a frozen look on our face, a low voice, a shuffling/stumbling walk, and hands that either tremble uncontrollably, or hang frozen in place. And our biggest fear is finding ourselves in a position where the normal human reaction is to pump a little adrenaline into the system, ie Stress, like standing in front of the Whole Damned World and having to light the Olympic Torch. I couldn't even light the candle at a Y-Guides meeting with my son, because that little bit of "Stage-Fright" stress contorted my body into a twisted trembling unmovable mass. So we tend to hide and go out less and less. But not the Champ,Friday night he stepped right into the ring with the one thing he knows will always win in the end, and on my card, the Champ took the round all the way. My point in all this is I hope that the readers of this e-mail(am not exactly sure if that is fellow viewers/browsers or MSNBC personnel) now have a better clue about something called "Parkinsons Disease/Syndrome", and to let you know that there is bill in Congress the "Udall Bill"- (S684/HR1462:named for Mo Udall, former congressman/environmentalist from Arizona who had to leave office when his PD got the upper hand) which would get a more equitable piece of Federal medical research $$ assigned to Parkinson's related disorders. Current Federal Funding is a mear $26 per victim. Somehow I think we could do more for a disease that has over 1.5 million victims in the US, 40% of whom are sricken BEFORE their 60th birthday; and whose cost in medical expense, lost wages and productivity, additional disability pay outs is estimated to be over $20 Billion per year!! So if you were "moved" by the Champ lighting the torch please write/email your Congressman and Senators to support and PASS(before the Election recess)the "Udall Bill" as part of the overall Health funding. And if you are MSNBC, NBC, CNBC how about some follow up on the CHAMP and his health problems. "Let's get moving on movement disorders" Thank you! -- Steve in Connecticut