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Sara Byron wrote asking about this term and described the symptoms: >What happened was that Dad was napping in his recliner. >and my sister couldn't wake him. She fed him anyway, and then a >little while later she realized that he had not been to the bathroom for >awhile and she tried to wake him again. Nothing she did would wake him. > she tried to inflict a little pain to get him going - like squeezing his >toes and poking his hand with her finger nails to no avail. When she tried >to move him he was absolutely limp, like a rag doll - which is incredibly >unusual. She noted that he was breathing and had a pulse. My father has also had these symptoms, but I never heard this term before. However, when he can not be woke up and is limp as a rag doll, he also has extremely low blood pressure (he's in a nursing home, they have to check b/p, temp, etc. whenever something unusual happens to a patient.) A doctor told us the PD meds can cause blood pressure to go really low sometimes. My dad also has these same problems when he has fever from some ordinary sickness. Sara also wrote: >After emptying an incredible amount of liquid from his bladder, and sitting >upright for awhile he was able to open his eyes. This worries me a lot, because retaining urine is one of the first signs we should have noticed and had checked out before my father's bladder finally "locked up" and he had to have a permanent catheter. Sara, If your father is taking artane or any drug in that class, please have your pharmacist review the side effects of those drugs with you as soon as possible, and you might even want to take him to see a urologist. Please don't ignore the bladder symptoms like we did, especially if he is having other bladder symptoms like going a lot but only a small amount of output each time, then sometimes lots of output like he had in the incident you talked about. You do NOT want him to have to have a catheter if it can be avoided. The catheter itself promotes infection in the body, and he will be constantly sick, not to mention the embarassment he will have from the stupid tube, and the extra expense. Sara also said: >sometimes when Dad is sleeping he has what we call mini-seizures, >where his eyes roll back and his eyes and arms jerk up uncontrollably - but >this was different - he was so loose! Yes, both these are very scary. Is your dad on clozaril? What about artane or one of the other cholinergics? These drugs seemed to be the cause of these diskinesias my dad had during sleep. The rag doll symptoms terrorfy me too, and since we don't have a PD specialist nearby, we haven't gotten any intelligent answers about it either. My heart goes out to you and your family. How I wish we had been able to keep my dad at home. He would still be walking today if we had. But nursing homes discourage patients from even trying to walk because they don't want them to fall because somebody might sue them. So patients always get worse once they have to go to a facility. But believe me, even though your dad must use a walker, he is much much much better off than if he'd been allowed just to vegetate like they do in a nursing home. Best wishes for you and your dad. Vicki Peyton [log in to unmask] Vicki