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Ida, Thank you. What you say about learning new things is true I'm sure. I have just recently realised that the amount of learning that has taken place in my ailing brain this last 5 months is pretty phenomenael, given I had almost 0 (conscious!) exposure to PD till then. Also I think the temptation to dwell on what is lost overrides the recognition of what may have been gained. I must admit I have ben worrying quite a bit about whether I'll have the necesssary competence to adjust meds when necessary, and to take advantage of things like Brian's charts which are in the 'too hard' basket right now. I do think more and more 'just one step at a time' - that's Parkie-think, for sure. Beth On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Ida Kamphuis wrote: > > It realy is a very threatening subject you ask about. During my first time as a > PWP I read about dementia as just an inevitable symptom of PD in several books. > Going to meetings of the Dutch organisation of PWP's, I could see with my own > eyes it was not that simple. I met a lot of people who where parkies for a long > time but where evidently not demented. > For myself I was not so sure, my life was turned upside down. It lasted a long > time before I knew the right dosis of med's. I suffered from disturbed > concentration. I could not read a book in another language than Dutch. > With the passing of time however all turned more or less back to normal. I know > my memory is not what it used to be. However, all people growing older feel the > same. > One diagnostic sign of dementia is the impossibility to learn something new. > Just three years ago we planned a holiday in Turkey. I have always tried to > learn a few hundreds words of the language of the countries we visited. In this > case it was a double challenge because Turkish not a language of the > Indo-European language-family. But I could do it. It did cost more repetition > than I would have needed before. But having done so the words remained in my > brain. > > I have looked for literature about this topic. I found just one thing. It > consists of preliminary unpublished results of a study of the departement of > neuropsychology of the University of Amsterdam. They found the following > disturbances in PWP's: > - disturbances in spatial orientation. > - disturbances in rote-learning. This became more difficult, more > time-consuming, but results were of the same quality and perseverance as in > normals. > So it may be true that Alzheimer dementia has a higher frequency in PWP's than > in normals, but it seems that the "dementia" that is usually seen in Parkinson > is from a different and less threatening type. > > Regards, Ida Kamphuis, 52/12 >