Dear Bob:
Sorry, but I have to ask you what you meant by saying your father-in-law
"died of his PD". I am still a failry new PWP and I am quite sure there are
still worlds of information out there which I don't as yet have. However
when I was first diagnosed I asked the neurologist whether or not this was a
terminal illness. He assured me it was not. I then began seeing a
Parkinson's specialist who has many times assured me that Parkinson's is not
a fatal illness. (This should twig you into realizing that this is a
fairly important issue for me.)
I accepted her answer until one day I was waiting in a drug store for a
prescription and I started leafing through the pages of one of these
information books on every possible illness known. Under Parkinson's it
said something to the effect that it runs its course over about 10 yrs. and
terminates in death. My heart stopped until I noticed that the publication
date of the text was 1935. Ok, so I tried to put this into a perspective,
and even though it said it had been revised in1995, I still held off
reacting until I (once again) checked it out.
Two family doctors and one neurologist said there was no truth
whatsoever to the information contained in that book.
Some months later I was reading an obituary in our national newspaper,
The GLobe and Mail - a newspaper with some credibility, which told the
story of a famous Canadian sculptor who had "recently died from Parkinson's
Disease." I told myself that this was not a medical journal and therefore
could make a mistake which is held by the wider uninformed population.
But you are a medical person. What do you mean that he died from this?
I'm sure that we are all aware of complications associated with it which
could eventually be terminal in their own right: pneumonia, choking,
falling. etc. But did you in fact mean to say that Parkinson's is itself
a terminal illness? I think this is an important distinction. I would very
much like to have clarification from you or anyone else with information on
this matter.
Barb Rager
