> In summary, from a man with everything to live for, I find myself >asking myself how much longer can I go on, and often my nightly prayer >is that I don't wake up." Mr X ended his complaint about being cursed with the above. he has had the same tough break that most of us have had. it is necessary to examine "everything to live for". golfing and bicycling competitively can still be done if he wants it enough to do it for the challenge - which has admittedly changed his handicap so to speak. life is hell if he decides that it is. life is a gift - being alive - that is not going to endure in good health until the last day for many. 64 years before PD is more gift than i got - mine was diagnosed when i was 48. the noticeable symptoms were there for some years before that. this poet was ill all his life i have read: Invictus William Ernest Henley Out of the night that covers me black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the felt clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. Ronald Vetter 1936, dz PD 1984, carbidopa/levodopa, Mirapex, selegiline [log in to unmask] Ridgecrest, California http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~rfvetter