md, I absolutely agree that the symptoms that I was displaying, the ones with all the acronyms(!), were in retrospect part of the pd, and in particular the rigidity that comes with it.

The sad fact of modern medicine is that often we get seen by 'specialists' who only see our health from the perspective of their particular specialism, therefore a rheumatologist will find conditions that fall into his/her remit, and the urologist will find those that relate to that discipline, etc. As Pd symptoms fall into many of these brackets a lot of us spend quite a while moving towards neurology without quite getting there, especially if we do not have tremor, or are young. I had massive amounts of tests done for every kind of arthritic condition under the sun - purely because my gp at that time thought my rigidity was a joint problem.......

On the other hand I believe that rigidity is a slightly overlooked problem in Pd, all of my neuros have concentrated more on slowness, cognitive affects, and looking for a visible tremor that I do not have. Rigidity is most definitely affected by and exacerbates postural problems, a two way street. Prior to medication I was very hunched and had a strong inward pull across the front of my chest, enough to limit comfortable breathing. These days I know that I am very off when this kind of rigidity returns, accompanied by face ache. This is the classic PD posture.......