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Dear List-Family.... It's so easy for our physicians, family/caregivers AND us to lump everything - every symptom, every sensation, every twinge or quirk, every ill we may have under the "Parkinson's banner." Because of that inclination, other debilitating conditions which we might have are often overlooked by our treating doctors and by us. They may settle down in your body and make themselves right at home there before anyone thinks to test for a non-Parkinson's-related condition. Case in point, and relayed to you with her permission, a dear friend, Joanne, has had PD for about 18 years. She had a fetal transplant about 3 1/2 years ago, the results of which have been somewhat disappointing. Over the last 6 or 8 months her family and friends have noticed that along with all the PD symptoms, Joanne has lost a terrific amount of weight, and has been troubled by severe dyskenesia, especially when eating. Of course, the PD was blamed. Joanne's a fighter! She has meet everything PD could throw at her with tremendous courage, trying whatever treatment and medication that has been available, as you'd expect a fighter to do, so the weight loss was treated like any other PD symptoms - something ELSE to battle and outwit. Soon this tall willowy woman was down to just a bit over 100 pounds, and after a check-up her neuro referred her to an endocrinologist. After a battery of tests Joanne was found to have Graves disease - a not uncommon and treatable disease of the Thyroid (in fact, both former President George Bush AND Mrs... Bush have Graves disease). Joanne has had a week's treatment for the Grave's disease and has already started to regain some of the weight (thank goodness!). The thing that's so scary is that everyone just automatically presumed Parkinson's was the cause of the weight loss in the first place. I believe it's VERY important that we ALL remember there ARE other diseases, syndromes, conditions - you name it - that we're subject to which are NOT Parkinson's-related. We MUST be vigilant enough to not automatically lump all our ill feelings under that PD banner till we're pretty darn sure that what we're troubled by actually IS a Parkinson's symptom. It's important we know when it IS Parkinson's and when it's NOT! Barb Mallut [log in to unmask]