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Dear Dennis I am a little worried, because your fear about general mental decline is of course a serious one and I only joked about it. Of course I can not determine that your fear is not justified. It is indeed a risk we Parkinson patients run more than other people. I do know however that it is not easy to determine whether a process like that has started. I wrote in my come-back mail I had problems with some intellectual tasks too after my pallidotomy. I was less worried about that, than with probems of articulation, I suppose because the doctors had predicted it, and told about the reason why and said it would be temporary, which it turned out to be. I remember that in one of your mails after your pallidotomy I saw a spelling error, which seemed to me so un-Dennis, that it made me anxious. I myself could not spell correctly in Dutch(!) after my pallidotomy. But now that is restored. Not every memory loss is a part of a general decline. Mental capacities may decline without taking along with them all its companions. A neurlogist can't determine that either. If one wants to know more one needs a "neuropsychological" test. Those tests can more or less, but more than can be done without them, unravel all factors. For example, to what extent concentration is disturbed. Concentration is a very vulnarable part of our mental functioning, but disturbances in it tend to be transitory. These tests also can differentiate between partial decline that is or is not indicative of a general one. It is a fact that some memory functions decline after we have reached the age of 15(!) Everyone who has observed a young child, that learns a new and totally unknown language runs the risk to catch a mourning mood about his own lost capacities. One of the signs of general decline is that one can not learn something new. I did read once in an article that I lost(!), but will try to find again, that the process of imprinting takes more time for people with Parkinson than for others, but after that is done the capacity to keep it is undisturbed. Bernhard Joly wrote on the French list this is a taboo issue and we all talk easily about our physical disabilities but not about our mental ones. Sometimes I have a mental "handicap" that started so many years ago, that the conclusion seems justified by now, that it is not a part of a general decline. Sometimes having a conversation i have an abrupt " black out". I do know the last sentence I said, but not its context. I have to ask: "What was I talking about". I only need a few words to get the whole thing back. Now I am writing this, the parallel this has with my abrupt falls strikes me. One complex faculty refuses abruptly to work, but can be restored immediately. Life is strange and a source of continuing weird observations. Ida Kamphuis, Holland -------------------------------------------------------------- Vriendelijke Groeten / Kind regards, Ida Kamphuis mailto: [log in to unmask]