First of all, I really really value everybody's contribution - marvelous stuff, and wish I could have long conversations with each of you about each post!

Ok, Peg, rereading your post, I think I got what you were saying now, it's clear. No, no abandonment plans here...I'll give yas whatever I can when I can. In terms of bean spilling - the link I gave earlier to the info about Dr. Hamer's work is probably the most resonant image I can relay of the gestalt of my current path...

The whole issue of diagnosis or misdiagnosis - very, very loaded, and ultimately vitally important. But in just speaking about where I'm at right now- it's not really the point either. I guess I would ask people what if instead of being cloaked in this garment called PD at the time of diagnosis, you were told you had some kind of dopamine problem, that there were treatments that could ameliorate the symptoms, but it was unknown how things would wind up going with you - would that make you feel better or worse?? This is where I think the meaning of the illness to the patient becomes very important - some people feel very comforted by the definitive world of the diagnosis even with its pessimism, but at least one can feel more or less "understood," validated for one's symptoms, part of a population that has a collective identity... On the other hand, a person can have completely the opposite reaction to the whole thing, feel trapped, doomed, labeled, judged, and foreclosed on. It's hard to see how that helps people live positive lives, and just living with that supposed knowledge would suppresss the very endorphins we need to keep our systems as healthy as possible. I think the important thing is to listen to one's body as it is now, and pay attention to the symptoms as they occur, but to stay present with them, and not use them to build an increasingly fearful forecast for the future.

As I said, being released from the diagnosis doesn't let me off the PD hook yet, because of my years with the meds, and figuring out how to disengage and built up my own vitality again. I think the crucial thing for me was and is my relatiionship with my current doctor - his confidence in the strength of his work, in the accuracy of his interpretation of my situtation, and in my potential for recovery. I've been looking for this for a long time!!! Although interesting that upon return to the US in the last few weeks, I saw another doctor - great guy, teaches at Harvard Medical School - told him about the original assignment to PD, and he immediately snorted and said, "Who gave you THAT diagnosis?" I said, "So you think it wasn't accurate originally?" He said, "Look at you - anyone with a little common sense would see that was way off the mark...."

But it doesn't really matter about that. What matters is how I deal with my situation, and in the largest sense it comes down to my determination, my surrender, my generating a transformative situation to heal my body. There is no reason that the plasticity of the brain can't extend itself to this task - none. So if gaining understanding not only of my own personal history, but that of my grandparents and their grandparents and their worlds is part of it, if finding ways to develop the ability to work and live from a place of muscle relaxation rather then tensing up about everything is part of it, if letting go of the fear that everyone else has that healing just not possible for you is part of it, if letting go of the meds by substituting mucuna, other herbs, physical exercise and meditation is part of it - the most important part for me is feeling free and licensed to envision a healed life in THIS lifetime and moving toward it, and letting go of all that came before.

Understanding the role of post-traumatic stress - Peter Levine's book Waking The Tiger is excellent, and he has concrete suggestions about how to address it. He says that even what would be a considered a "normal," routine event to many - an ordinary surgical procedure for instance - can generate PTSD for someone else. Harley, in terms of conversion disorder - well, don't know much about it, but yes, I think Freud's work is very related to the work my Swiss doctor does, although these contemporary guys take it way past what Freud was working on. Again, the link to Dr. Hamer's descriptions of his work are informative in this regard, but again, the development of exploring the patterning that is established in the brain long before our own births is the big deal here...

I think that there are people (doctors) working with this psycho-bio-geneologie modality in the US and other places- I am just currently trying to find out who they are, and I will report on that.

There were many wonderful comments made, and I may hopscotch a little in reply, but I plan to continue and complete the conversations we have started here.