You are not alone. A few years back we did a survey amongst ourselves and of the twenty or so taking part, every darned one of us had been through hell as children. Everything from my drunken father to the Blitz to who knows what and then for many life just got more interesting. I won't go into the problems a ten year old boy has protecting his Mom from his drunken dad nor what its like to step between him and his younger brother. Or about his mother being enthrall to a pill pushing doctor until it got so bad that I went in and physically threatened the good doc (helped that I looked like Sonny Barger by then). Wasn't long after that that I let the old man kill himself. Got married to a wonderful woman who carried a similar load. Hers came out in her own health and there were times of months in a wheel chair. The two house fires didn't help any. And when the grandparents needed help she and I stepped up to the plate. Didn't know it was an eight year commitment, of course.

Lot more, but that's enough. There are several others with worse stories and some slightly better, but the point I am trying to make is that you really are among family. We have all been kicked around by life and, like the guy in Monty Python's the Holy Grail, just keep on ticking.

That realization was when I first began to understand that there was a lot more to PD than I had been told. Stress doesn't just make our symptoms worse. Stress causes PD and the process starts from Day One. Either that or we are the unluckiest bunch of so-and-so's on the planet.