Bob D.....
I've yet to EVER hear ANY physician refer to someone - ANYONE - ever
dying from Parkinson's, even when I've purposely brought the subject
up with 'em.
Talk about DENIAL??? Mention PD and death to a physician in the same
sentence!
I can understand trying to shield the newly diagnosed PWP from that
type of frightening information - especially since PD is rather a
"slow killer," compared to, say, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), but just
how long are we - patient AND physician, AND general public, AND
federal government - supposed to keep our respective and collective
heads stuck in the sand before somebody says, 'Hey folks, this
disease might possibly kill ya some day?"
It seems to me that virtually ALL MDs and NEARLY all PWPs suffer from
a major case of the "Emperor Has No Clothes Syndrome."
A THOUGHT FOR YOU: If AIDS had not been presented as the terrible
killer it is.... had AIDS patients, physicians, and advocates
claimed, "Hey, AIDS is a nasty disease, and sure.... people DO suffer
greatly when they have it, but no one ever dies from it," does
ANYONE believe there would've been such a frantic world-wide search
for a cure?
Those of us with Parkinson's MUST admit to ourselves and to the
public that PD *IS* a killer, and since younger and younger people
are getting the disease, younger people are going to die from it.
And maybe then... maybe THEN funding will be made for research to
find the cure.
Barb Mallut
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-----Original Message-----
From: robert l dolezal <[log in to unmask]>
To: Multiple recipients of list PARKINSN
<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, December 12, 1998 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: Ron Alexander's demise
>Charlie - I was hoping you would articulate a bit on the findings,
like,
>explaining "mortality." "Two to five times as high" - huh?
>
>Does it mean, if the normal 60 year old man has a projected
life-span of 16
>more years (just an eg.), that the same man, but with PD, would have
a
>life-span projected at from 8 years ("two" times as high) to 3.2
years
>("five" times as highi)?
>
>If it does mean this, one wonders why, for so long, we were told
that PD
>doesn't shorten life. I was told that, just 6 years ago. Clearly,
what I
>was told - what most or all of us were told - was erroneous.
Couldn't the
>docs see their patients dropping like flies around them, at a much
faster
>rate than their non-PD friends of the same age?
>
>Just curious.
>
> Bob Dolezal
>
