Rick,
I guess you know the song!!! Please don't take offence at the following, I value our friendship.
We know each other well from the 2 weeks we spent together at our house in the UK. I also guess if you had thought about it, you would not have pressed the send button before you wrote, "you had better go, because she isn't going to die from PD. It is much worse than that.". It will have two effects.
First it will put the feat of God into newly diagnosed, ( I have had correspondance from newly diagnosed, very frightened and upset.)
Second, It might well resulty in a breakup of a couple who were quite happy together before your comment.

We have often said PD is a mixture of related illneses, we mostly are different in the symptoms we show, our rate of progression, the age at which we show symptoms and so on. Look at Muhamed Ali amd MJF, both have had PD for a similar time. MJF is frequently interviewed and is in good shape. Ali is in very poor shape, unable to speak, and comunicates with his wife by a small typing machine. I am also about the same length of time with PD, (20 years), and have a slow progression. still drive occassionally, can still shower and dress in the morning unmedicated, but can barely shuffle when unmedicated. So we can't say for sure that we will ALL die in a terrible way. Some may simply die in their sleep. We can't say for sure that in your later years, you will die of cancer, but some will. All we can say for sure is we will all die!!! You need to keep a positive attitude, (like Lindylanka), I'm sure it helps.
One reference, an analysis of 240 Parkinson patients
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j836773656w30617/
gives the causes of death as,

Pneumonia 44%
malignent neoplasms 11.6%
heart disease 4.1%
cerebral infection 3.7%
setacemia 3.3%

So what do we mean by a terrible PD death? As we have said, we all die of something.


Lets take the optumism further.

"PD is an incurable disease" Yet we have reports thar a small number of PD patients who have been cured". There is a suggestion that we should say "allegedly cured" which is probably safer, I have seen 2cases of a cure" being effected. In both cases they could move like a healthy person, and never again needed medication. To me that is a cure, There are other examples in this thread. of another 2 people being cured. So there are grounds for optimism that should give hope.

Ron