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Dear listfriends, I need to tell somebody this, and as it appears right now, no one in my life with any sense about them will listen. I have had it up to here, and then some with this f***ing illness. I have told you all of this before, but mine is not the regular progressive disease. My globus pallidus was blown out in a CO poisoning nine years ago; hence, no tremor at all, just a lot of akinesia and bradykinesia. I am so pissed off right now, I don't know where to start. I can just see the responses coming back: "Jacob, we are all in the same boat," and "I can imagine how you feel." THE HELL YOU CAN!! I am 27 years old, living a nightmare that I can't wake up from. And it just keeps getting worse. Last Friday night I was at a woman's apartment (I'll explain later), and I twisted my ankle, my BAD ankle, coming down a flight of stairs. It's not broken, nothing to be concerned about - just possible torn cartilage or something like that. Now, on with my tirade. I know I have been seen doing endless complaining in the past, but now I'm really going to let it go. The medical establishment has no reason to develop a treatment for my kind of condition. Why? Because it seems that no one else in the world has damage to only the pallidus! A fetal tissue implant was somehow so promising; until I learned that the grafts would only supply dopamine. Exactly what I don't need - more dopamine. Hey, I've got presynaptic dopamine up the ying-yang, what I need is receptors. And now for the worst news of all. It appears that despite what all of the medical experts I have seen have told me, I am indeed getting worse.Where once I was able to walk around the large urban campus of UW-Milwaukee, now, I'd be lucky to make it 25 steps. I fall, on the average of five to six times a day now. You know what the worst part of this mess is? It's the fact that all of my friends and family weren't expecting this. They were all expecting, not hoping, not praying, but expecting me to make a full recovery from the brain injury. I'm so sorry to drag you all through this again. But some good news. My sex drive hasn't suffered. If that's the good news, I would like to try damned to hell for a while. I am an attractive guy to most women, that is, until I open my mouth or start to move, at which point I become a hideous freak to all of them. The woman's appartment that I was at last week? Oh yeah - well she's really nice and cute. We had dinner and watched a movie then we kissed for about an hour and a half. Then she comes out and says she just wants to be my friend. I am not hurt. It has become something that I can count on. Jacob