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Norma Pohlman wrote... "He drools terribly, he has a blank expressionless stare at all times, he is stooped but walk on his own fairly well, he constantly gets lost, (no sense of direction at all), he is always seeing people that are not really there, he comes up with scenarios that are very real to him but are not real, he has bad blood pressure drop upon standing, sometimes to the point of a momentary blackout. He only has a slight tremor, he takes Permax .05mg 3x aday, and Effexor which is an antidepressant. He took Sinement before moving to live with us but due to his wandering around and getting lost the Dr. believed he was over dosing himself because he did not remember if he had taken the medicine, they changed him to Permax.." My comments.... Your father-in-law's version of PD sounds much like my own father's, particularly the blood pressure and the relative lack of tremor. Last autumn I could have written your description, adding only that he had a severe perception problem, not realizing until his empty hand reached his mouth that he didn't have a coffee cup in his hand, and so on. The first week of November we saw Dr. Stern at Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia (PA, USA). His immediate reaction was that Dad was overmedicated. At that time he was taking a tiny dose of Eldepryl, an equally small dose of Symmetryl, and Sinemet CR 25/100 (?) 5 times a day. Dr. Stern changed his meds to "regular" Sinemet 25/100 (?) 3 times a day. Mom worked up her courage and made the final change to the Sinemet 10 days later. 3 days after that, Dad was in the hospital. To make a long story relatively short, Dad's "back". He's still on the dosage of Sinemet that Dr. Stern prescribed, it just took 2 weeks on the neurology wing of the hospital to get him sufficiently detox'ed so that we could see that it was the right dosage. (They actually cut him back to a lower dose, then worked back up to this one.) He's now spent 4 weeks on the rehabilitation wing, and really enjoying therapy. He's got about 5 hours of therapy a day (occupational, physical, speech, more occupational, more physical). When we took him out on a "day pass" for Christmas, he participated in the conversations, laughed, joked, walked on his own, ate, had no real problems with his vision, etc. etc. In Dad's case it was the medications. I can't promise that to be the case for your father-in-law, but I think I'd ask the question enough times to feel like I was heard, and got an answer that had some thought behind it. Good luck! Diane McHutchison [log in to unmask] Long distance caregiver for Dad -- 69/6+