Young onset in 1992 at age of 39. Self-employed as land surveyor in eastern Tennessee for 30 years. Strong fit to Parkinson's Personality-type. So, of course, I am determined to find a cure and seek to do so via compiling data on a website which will hopefully evolve into an online thinktank one day. I am convinced that the current levodopa-centric view of PD is wrong and has skewed research funding for forty years. Therefore, true to PWP form, I'm going to change that. :-)

Writer Rhetta Ghrimley Johnson once said, "I come froma family that believed that any problem could be solved if given enough library time." That pretty much describes both my initial and ongoing reactions to diagnosis. That is by no means unusual for PWP. What is unusual, however, is where it led me.

Four years ago (2005) I was introduced online to a French surgeon named Anne Frobert. Third generation of a prominent French medical familyj and a graduate of France's finest schools, her career had been cut short by her own PD. As I came to realize, like many PWP, she struggled with OCD. But Anne had managed to do something extraordinary and had channeled her obsessions into PD research. Taking advantage of the new powers offered by the Net, the access it gave to the scientific literature, and her own training, she had immersed herself in the subject. I am convinced that she knew more than anyone on Earth about PD.

We hit it off and found that our interests and talents reinforced each other. Thus began a three-year daily collaboration that only ended when the burden of her own PD took its toll.

So, I find myself in a most unusual position. I know one heck of a lot about PD, but I have no credentials. I have a legacy of both Anne's work and our joint efforts and a desire to preserve them and make them available in hopes that they may some day lead to something greater. But, what to do?

My solution is at www.parkinsonsonline.org. It may lead to nothing, but it is the best I could do.

But let's talk about me. :-)

My mother was 16 and my father 17. Pregnancy was difficult - both infection and preclampsia. Both my immune and endocrine systems altered.

My father was an abusive alcoholic. My mother a "helpless" teenager. Extremely stressful environment further molding my system.

First born with two siblings and a child-mother, I adopted the pathology of the "hero child", a big step on the path to PD.

Stoic, responsible, dependable. You know the drill.

Multiple stressors culminated in tremor in 1992. Influenza in 1999 led to gait problems and diagnosis in 2000.

Would like to hear from similar personality types. There are a lot of us.