reply to Manon
Ok thanks....

..I believe that there are more & more young people being diagnosed with PD. I was 51 when I was diagnosed and Michael J Fox was 41 because he is exactly 10 years younger than me....and at that time he had PD. for over 10 years. When I am trying to be positive I will think to myself Michael J is 10 years younger but has had t his disease 10 years longer....and he is always positive.

10 percent rule. You need to be 10% smarter than the object you are working with or... it won't work. This goes for doctors as well. If you are 10% smarter than the doctor you are working with then bail. They won't be of any help to you. I had a doctor attempt to rescind my diagnosis when he examined me ON Sinemet. Of course I wasn't showing signs. You aren't going to have symptoms if you are being treated... duh. So check the doctor and his credentials and where his specialty lies. A neurologist may be a genius with MS but could have not the slightest clue as to how to treat PD. Research, research, research. Then research some more. Oh, and become friends with you condition, the more you know the more questions you can ask.

@A MyParkinsonsTeam Member I forgot to mention that ! Lol. In deed, the accurate doctor is the movement disorder specialist!

Mentioned Users

A MyParki...

Getting a diagnosis from a "Movement Disorder Specialist" should be a priority.

Advice I would give:
1. Be careful of what you wish for. You might find out you have something else that is worse than PD. B-)
2. If you think you have PD, be sure you are seeing a neurologist who is also a movement disorder specialist. Get second opinions if you think you need them. Son't "shop" for a doctor who will tell you what you want to hear. Find doctors who respect you, listen to you, and explain things to you as needed. Do your own research so you know more or less what you're talking about, and what the doctors are talking about.
3. Try to stay as healthy as you can for as long as you can.
4. Examine what life means to you and what is really important to you.

I'm not sure how I would have reacted to a diagnosis of PD at an earlier age - looking back, I have had many of the related symptoms and/or conditions throughout early, mid, and later adult life, but medications for some of my other conditions might have masked PD symptoms or prevented them from becoming apparent until later. Plus, PD was always an older person's disease - I was always too young to have PD until I had a diagnosis. In the last few years, thanks to database research by folks with funding from the like of the MJ Fox Foundation and others, patterns of symptoms and conditions have been showing up and instruments to help clinicians identify possible and probable PD cases have been developed.

Of course, DNA research has also been going on and additional genes and mutations have been identified that are related to genetically caused PD. Which leads to the last piece of advice:

5. Get a DNA analysis done, preferably the whole genome if you can afford it, and revisit the data 2 or 3 times a year as new research is added to available repositories like SNPedia.org (page on PD is at http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Parkinson%27s_... ). (A report can be automatically generated at Promethease.com https://promethease.com/ for a nominal ($5-$10) fee. Use at your own"risk"). It might not result in a PD diagnosis, but it is interesting reading.

Of course, the young person's eyes will probably have glazed over long before I got to the end of that lengthy harangue.