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Camilla & Natalie,& everyone who wants to listen - Thanks for replying. I hope you will have patience with me as I try to explain my reasons for thinking this. At first glance it sounds utterly absurd and you will be able to imagine the typical response I get to it and probably yours will be similar, but please hear me out before you make your final judgment, and I am not particularly worried about being wrong, I'd get over that, but I was making NO headway against this horrible condition before this, and now I have made considerable progress in my opinion. What is on the list of causes so far? Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there are several known causes of Parkinsonian-like symptoms including: carbon monoxide, carbon bisulfide, arteriosclerosis,, maybe magnesium or other heavy metals, reserpine, MTPT, the viral encephalitis of a few decades back,etc. most (or all?) of which do not respond to Sinemet. Don't sneeze on it yet, but my suspicion is airborne allergens. (You may snicker, it's okay), but while you're recovering listen a little longer & it may not sound QUITE so foolish. I'll repeat some of what I said on the Harvard Webforum so you don't have to look it up: I got my dx in 1992, and (Camilla) maybe it would be more correct to say it was upgraded, (or downgraded) to MSA in ~1995 because I was showing quite a bit of evidence of autonomic nervous system involvement (slow eye focus, bowel & bladder incontinence at times, digestive, breathing, heart & circulatory problems),it was horrible. So in March of 1996 I got some more news: I was PREGNANT! I told them they had the wrong number and hung up, but they kept calling back. Now you know why I was wondering about the IQ thing. It was unreal, to say the least, but she, Mia Alexandra, Dec 5, 1997, 6 lb 10 oz is absolutely adorable and seems to be perfectly healthy, a born comedienne, the only unusual thing I have noticed is that instead of cooing & babbling she kind of, well, growls, is the best way I can describe it, it is HILARIOUS, my other two, B&G 14 & 11, think she is IT, and she reciprocates the feeling to them. Anyway, I will go back to PD. After I found out I was expecting a child I was concerned about the medications effects on the baby (Sinemet & Eldepryl) so I, with my neurologist's agreeing, decided to see if I could stay off the medications for the first trimester because that was the critical time of development. I made it for eight weeks at which point I ended up in the ER with a threatened miscarriage and in BAD shape. I went back on Sinemet, but as little as I could, again because of the baby. During that 8 week period on NO meds I found,after much trial, (I have LOTS of pain with my PD) anyway I found that if I massaged my neck muscles A VERY LONG TIME, with a heat massager that ALL my symptoms would GO AWAY, JUST BRIEFLY. My neurolgist, and I believe he is very knowledgable, didn't have any explanation at all. This of course suggested to me that, Hey, maybe all my dopamine producing cells are not dead or dying, maybe there's another glitch of another sort. I was on my own to try & find out what I could. During the remainder of my pregnancy while on very minimal medication I began to notice distinct fluctuations in my symptoms. On two occasions we went on trips, (I wasn't really able to go, but went anyway rather than stay home alone) I improved dramatically even on one occasion my symptoms did a complete reverse, (it was time for my meds & normally I would be pretty bad, but instead they all went away) for a while. Both times when I got back home I was WORSE. My husband & I began to think that it was something at home that was responsible for the difference. To not be too long I'll just say we began to narrow it down till allergens began to look increasingly quilty. (I had always had VERY severe sensitivities to many things, animal dander , concrete - I knew if I swept a concrete floor I'd be up 1-2 nights in a chair trying to get my breath,etc. But the amazing thing was now I didn't exhibit hardly any of my usual symptoms to those things, & many more so I went to be tested. The tests showed I was DRASTICALLY allergic to some things (cat dander in particular) but also many others. One allergist estimated that I was more allergic than 80% of his patients. But could allergies conceivably cause the drastic symptoms I experienced? I knew that with an anaphylactic type reaction, your whole body reacts on exposure to certain allergens, but the real check with me was the reality check, I knew that on certain occasions where I was exposed to my known allergens I got a lot worse and when I was in the best of circumstances allergywise my symptoms would GO AWAY. For instance I was evaluated at UVA by Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills. A young doctor took my history & after ~30 minutes, I got BAD. The DR. had cats at home I learned later. Then he let me sit in the "patient sensitive area" After ~l0 minutes I was COMPLETELY NORMAL. There are many more instances. I'll tell more later.