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In a message dated 1998/11/06 14:25:33, you write: << I was talking to our family Doctor last night about my mom. She says her tremor is worse and she is concerned about my mother's memory. She thinks that my mom may have either dementia or may have been having tiny strokes along the way. She also mentioned that mom was having trouble with her bladder and she is wetting the bed at night. Mom is having great difficultly using her hands ( arthritis/Parkinson's and has a hard time using the call button to call the nurses. She is terribly constipated and her lower back is causing her pain. She not able to walk on her own and is very very weak. She needs help to be fed. I don't think my mom will be coming home. The way she is right now I could never look after her. Plus her memory seems to be deteriorating faster....I talked to our Doctor about taking mom to the movement disorder clinic but I feel that mom has gone down so much and is too frail and she feels that in the end that it wouldn't hold much hope and also mom has not had very little success with many of the parkinson's drugs. Even Requip didn't help. I am going in to see mom today. My cold is better ( it's not gone ) but I really want to see how mom is doing. I wish there was something I could do, besides tell my mom I love her and watch her deteriorate... I think she will have to go into a nursing home and in the past we had discussed this and she in no uncertain terms to me that she did not ever want to go in one. With me being in a wheelchair and being not very strong physically there is no way I can look after her. >> my dear susan this still sounds like a mis-diagnosed or mis-understood situation to me for your mother to have deteriorated so quickly from being able to look after herself !!! *** only four weeks ago *** !!! to her condition now this all sounds very much unlike pd's 'progress' and very much like her current carers' not understanding pd and its medications and their inter-actions viz: 1. of course her tremors are worse - she's been taken off pd meds 2. if i were taken off all pd meds [yikes] i know i'd be so uncomfortable that i wouldn't appear coherent either 3. back pain = easily a symptom of under medication of pd 4. trouble walking alone = ditto 5. very 'weak' = ditto 6. troubles with minor motor activities = ditto 7. frequency of need to urinate = ditto 6. constipation is a typical pd symptom probably exacerbated by her lack of pd meds: long term constipation is dangerous and potentially fatal do you have someone else there who could help you get tough with the medical situation what about her neuro - is he aware of what's happened to her? do not assume that because someone has a medical degree of any kind that they know how to handle pd sadly enough, it just ain't so please make sure somehow or other that this doesn't spiral down into an unnecessary tragedy i'm not 'hammering' at you: [well, i am - but only with the best of intentions i can barely express how strongly i feel about this; there but for grace, go i holey-moley i'm only a few years younger than your mother and i've had pd considerably longer janet janet paterson - 51 now / 41 dx / 37 onset - almonte/ontario/canada http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/ [log in to unmask]