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Dennis, Thank you for your quick response. I did not intend to ask to clarify what you meant by the tripping and falling when off. What I meant was to use your observation about tripping to illustrate how different we ,PWP's are and also how blind for facts a person can be if he is not aware of these differences and thinks his own observations are the standard for all PWP's, which you didn't. Your obsrevation struck me because I have been sometimes so amazed that the reflexes you talk about may do their job perfectly for me, also when off, which proves, like Tom said that the faculties for functioning are not destroyed, but they work only when the disequilibrium that triggers them is some unexpected thing as in tripping or someone gives me a push. I remember the examinations before my pallidotomy, when I had a very bad of, but the only result of the pushes I got to test my equilibrium was that I seemed for a few moments to be on. So my mentioning of your experience with falls which is or seems to be so different, was not critically. In the last paragraph of my mail I stressed the importance to feel free to mention any symptom one experiences, without ending up in a 'tis-'tisn't argument. We have to accept the variability of the PD symptoms, and not deny that variability while it does not fit into a theory. I'll write now about my problems with falling. I experienced for a couple of months after being diagnosed the falls caused by a low BP. It is for me easy to differntiate them from fallings which have other causes. It is better described as fainting and one actually loses consciousness for a few moments. Than the falls that are fitting partly in Tom's model. They happen when i reach for something and bend a little forward. Picking up an object from the ground, especially if it is heavy and sitting down on my heels are triggers of falling. But these fallings happen when I am altready close to the floor so a big fall is impossible. Reaching for something causes more bouncing than falling. All these kinds of fallings are not inflluenced by my pallidotomy but are more frequent after it than before. Now the real problem falls. My most scary falls, that I had before my pallidotomy happened when I was "of" and started as freezing. I could not move at all on those moments, but slowly my posture changed and my balance was affected and it ended in a fall, which ended on its turning my freezing. Or it ended in being rescued. Needless to say I did not dare to use stairs when alone at home.I now have a "stair lift" I have made one time a real fall off stairs. Even a PWP is able to think very much during the time one is in the act of falling. But after arriving downstairs I felt very relieved, because the only damage next to bruises was a broken little finger, that in the emergency ward,where we arrived in the middle of the night in a yoking mood, because the feeling of relief dominated, turned out to be only dislocated. This kind of falls don't happen any more because I don't freeze any more. I had one other scary kind of falling, which did not dissappear after my pallodotomy but on the contrary happened after it much more frequent.This was only temporary and they now happen less than before the surgery. The worst of them where only a bit less scary and happened when "on". They came very suddenly and could happen when I was staying or walking. It fell as if the only coordination of my muscles was that they all at the same moment refused to do any work at all. After a fall like that I was unable to get on my feet again without help. A scary thing of these falls was that even the defense reflexes a normal person has when falling so he arrives hands first and not face first on the street stones were also on strike. So, sometimes I looked like a battered wife with a shiner and people, seing us together examined Andre doubtfully. The amazing thing is that nearly all my power to do something myself is lossed so abruptly, but with the same abruptness regained. If I got a little help to stand on my feet again, I could immediately walk again as if nothing had happened. I sometimes thought it was in that respect exactly the same as another abrupt loss of funktions with the same abrupt regain with a bit of help. The start of this symptom goes back to the first years of my PD and does not grow worse. It happens when i am in the midst of a conversation talking Very abruptly I only know the last sentence I said, but my mind seems empty as I try to remember what I was telling and why. I can't remember what was the object of the conversation. But asking somebody what we were talking about, a few words in response are sufficient to remember all: the object of the conversation, who had said what and what I wanted to say about it, also an abrupt loss of function which is restored competely with a moment of help. The relaton between this last symptom and the falling is purely speculative and might be not existing at all. Ida -------------------------------------------------------------- Vriendelijke Groeten / Kind regards, Ida Kamphuis mailto: [log in to unmask]