I have been living with YOPD for 13 years, and the medicine the patients received in the clinic was L-dopa, a precuror to sinement that is considered a gold standard of PD treatment for many patients with this chronic condition. And the simarilities to the reaction of the patients is strikingly similiar. If you take to much Sinement (Carbidopa/Levodopa) you experience erratic body movements, and issue of mania and other side effects.

But, Flu Epidemic and sleeping Sickness followed right WWI, where many chemical agents were used as weopans in large nnumbers. And PD has a similiar distinction that it first discovered at the beginng of the Industrial age in 1817 by a london doctor named James Parkinsons who wrote an essay called Shaking Palsy.

In Baltimore and in Northern California a few men had developed a new derivative of heroin which caused instant paralys after using this drug. The Clinical drug is now called MPTP, which is now used to study ways to develop treatments for PD using animals to try new treatments.

Consudering PD is thought to be caused by the loss of the chemical Dopamine in the brain,

But. the movie starts out with some interresting clues about how this disease started in a young boy, He is described by jis mother as an avid reader and was a good student, but the mother and one of his teachers noticed that is writing became harder to read because of his writing necame smaller in print, and eventually succumbed to one morning his mother was unable to wake him. He was sent to hospital where he spent in a comatose state for many years.

The Doctor, Oliver Sacks was sent to this hospital that had many patients that suffered from this condition, and one morning he noticed one lady who could barely move caught her glasses in her hands before they hit the floor. So in some ways the brain is able to function, but the body is frozen in place.

The Young Man is given the first trial of L-dopa, and after increasing the dose to a sufficient level, he awakens and returns to almost normal state, but he still acts as a young teenager although he is in his late 40′s or early 50′s. They wventually get approval from the medical board to try to awaken the rest of these patients, Such a wild scene, one moment tou have many patients unable to move, and slowly the place is pure bedlam. All these patients think it is the year they were first struck with this condition, although in most cases many years has been lost.

Examples of touch, music, changing environment like the floor pattern, and dancing and other therapies made as much difference to these people’s lives as well as the medicine.

But, more medicine was needed to keep these patients active, which caused many sad side effect that were in physical, and physcological in nature, and the young man was returned to comatose state, just like the rest of them.

The movie ends, but because of this doctor’s observations, he made the biggest advance in PD treatment that in the field of medical field has not been repeated since then.

Do I think another repeat of sleeping sickness or an epidemic of increased cases of PD in the future, YES.

Just look what Crystal Meth does, or why in America, the fastest growing group of PD patients in America are the migrant workers that work in the fields of California picking our produce, And China isn’t exactly have a stellar image on environmental issues. And the battlefield of Iraq may be another place.

But, I hope I am wrong, but Bush hasn’t been very good advocate for medical research and he sure has no conscience on social issues either.

Davud W Walker

I’m not sure what you wish to know. The disease you suffered from as a child was basically swelling of your brain due to an infection from a virus or bacterium. Chances were that you had the Chicken Pox or a cold sore (herpes simplex) and the virus transverse the blood brain barrier infecting the cerebral tissue. This will cause swelling of the brain tissue within the tight confines of the skull.

At this point the brain’s functions are impaired causing a variety of symptoms. The more common ones due to a minor infection would be fever, loss of energy, little or no appetite, and a general overall sick feeling.

In more sever cases you have high fever, extreme sensitivity to light, a form of motion sickness causing nausea & vomiting, extremely painful headaches, stiff neck, general confusion & forgetfulness, seizures, and lethargic (sleepiness and/or unconsciousness).

Not something to take mildly, the infected should be monitored. Understand that the disease itself is not contagious, only the virus or bacterium that caused it is. Plus you can only suffer the symptoms if the virus or bacterium is able to cross your brain blood barrier and infect the brain tissue, and that is rare.

Thus you could contract the disease the caused the Encephalitis in sick individual, but it is very doubtful that it will cause you to suffer Encephalitis.

Anyway the longer the brain is swelled, and the amount of swelling is causing damage to the sensitive tissues. Also a high fever is literally cooking the brain tissue. Both are capable of creating debilitating brain damage.

A person who survives a sever case could have speech problems, muscle coordination loss, blindness or decreased vision, learning disabilities, seizures, etc.

If you are suffering from some aftereffect, the only person who might be able to help with that would be a neurologist. Then again it depends of the type of brain damage and the severity.

The Don.

Three comments=an overreaction haha lightn up woman then go make me dinner…just playin

[quote]Tapion said: “What if your patient 0, the one responsible for the millions of deaths, you passed it on to them, how would you feel. Knowing that your the one who killed millions of inocent lives.”
Luckily you’d be dead already so you wouldn’t know the devastation you caused.

You might want to read the first sentence of the article, Sammie.

i dont think any of them are.