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hi all i sent the following message to oprah today along with my "off - revisited" post janet http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm 51/10 - almonte/ontario/canada - [log in to unmask] janet paterson ---------------------------------------- Dear Oprah; I am sending this message to you as part of a group effort to ask your assistance in making the varied faces of Parkinson's Disease [PD] more visible (and thus, the toll of this disease more understood). PD is widely and incorrectly thought of as 'an old person's disease'. I first noticed symptoms in 1984 at age 37, and was diagnosed in 1988 at age 41. I have included below a message about my hour-by-hour experience with PD. I have learned, thanks to 'the PD list', that, statistically, a case can be made for stating that fully half of all PD diagnoses apply to people under 47 years of age. The negative shock of this idea can be countered by the news of positive developments in pharmaceutical and surgical treatments for PD which are published with increasing frequency. A cure is no longer considered an impossibility. I am grateful to be a member of a unique Parkinson's Disease support group on the Internet, and consider our e-mailing-list-cyber-family one of the un-sung miracles of our time. We use this on-line mailing list by sending e-mail messages into a central computer (located at the University of Toronto), which then instantly copies those messages to all 1600 members world-wide. If I were to send in an inquiry about medications, for instance, I might have several knowledgeable and helpful replies within hours or even minutes. As an example of the type of communication that we share with each other, I have included below a copy of a message about my hour-by-hour experience with PD. Any assistance that you could provide in making Parkinson's Disease more visible would be deeply appreciated. Best regards, Janet Paterson E-mail: [log in to unmask] Web Page: http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm Telephone: 613 256 1859 Address: PO Box 1456, Almonte, Ontario, Canada K0A 1A0 ---------------------------------------- Subj: what does 'off' mean? - re-visited Date: 98/07/09 ---------------------------------------- etc...