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I've been doing sporadic research on PD for about the past year, but decided to get serious about it by searching out the best PD sites and subscribing to this and the CARE lists. My mom, who is now 79, was diagnosed by our family doctor with PD about a year ago. Looking back, we can see the signs over several years, although Mom has some arthitis and osteoprosis and hearing loss which masked the slowness of movement, bad balance, shuffling steps, and blank expression. We thought her problems with constipation was due to the slowness of movement and intake of iron from anemia which she has suffered from for about ten years. Anyway, on her 77th birthday Mom had a bad fall in her bedroom and spent several hours trying to get up on her own before calling me, and since then her left shoulder and arm have been pretty much useless, although only a rib was broken in the fall. Two weeks before her 78th birthday over one weekend (after a couple of other falls) she lost the ability to get out of bed by herself and since then we have had caregivers with her during the day and me to sleep with her at night--she has lived in our house for several years. She spent a few days in the hospital after she first became weak, which is when I heard the term Parkinsons, and was started on some heart medicine, stool softeners, arthitis pills, and acid controllers. Our family doctor has discouraged me from taking her to a nuerologist and starting her on any Parkinsons medicines. Mom only shakes when she gets really tired or upset, but has a lot of rigidity. The doctor feels she will need the medicine as some of the other symptoms occur--shaking, difficulty swallowing, further loss of movement--and if she starts now the side effects will be bad and she will also build a tolerance to the medicines. We've had the physical therapists from the homecare agency a few times, but they leave after Mom gets to a plateau. Last week Mom had her 79th birthday. Mom's depressed, not getting better but not really getting much worse. She hardly ever gets dressed, and its hard to get her to walk between the rooms of our house. We have had some problems with bedsores where her spine curves high on her back, and had one scare with shingles, which were quickly treated. Lately she has had some trouble with her eyes, and reading romance novels has been her chief pleasure for several years. Mom's not much for doctoring, and we had a pretty poor experience with an orthopedic doctor (who probably should have spotted the Parkinsons) who gave her a couple of cortisone shots after she hurt her shoulder and only saw her as two bad knees and a bad shoulder. What should we do?? I want to take her to a neurologist--the nearest large city to me is Evansville, IN, where I hear there are several good doctors, including a Dr. Pain--what a name--but I don't want to put her through tests and medicines that won't do much good. From reading some PD articles on-line it sounds like Mom is pretty far along on the standard scales of disability, and has a non-shaking form of the disease, which makes waiting for tremors to star a moot point. Her system is pretty sensitive--she can't eat a lot of vegetables and fruit, and I don't know what she can tolerate since the PD diet is the exact opposite of what she has eaten for years. I don't know what I can contribute to this list, but hope to learn a lot from the rest of you. Thanks for your patience. Cindy Birk Conley [log in to unmask] >From Southeastern Illinois to your modem!! >>http://www.midwest.net/scribers/cbconly