I now wonder if I might have a low-level case of the disease. It would explain much.

I of course never knew her as she stayed in London when her parents moved to Sydney and my Dad was much younger than her anyway. She was a lovely looking girl and my Dad said a “lovely person”, and it broke my Grandmother’s heart to leave her behind with her older sister when they had to leave. But my Grandfather was severely depressed after serving in the Boer War and WW1 and then returning to see the destruction of his Cabinet Making business with the bombing of London and London Drs told my Grandmother she had to take him away to Australia.

I have always wondered what this strange disease was that affected her so badly. My Grandmother also mentioned ‘Elephantitis’ perhaps that related to the swelling of the glands connected with ‘Sleepy Sickness’?

In mid-January of 2015 his neurologist diagnosed him with Encephalitis Lethargica and put him on Carbidopa/Levidopa (L-Dopa). He improved for a while but is currently in a decline. He went through several months of intense physical, occupational and speech therapy but even that was difficult as some days were close to normal and some days were really really bad.

He has left side weakness, confusion, poor short term memory, muscle aches and pains not related to injury, sore through, hiccups, upste stomach, super sensitive hearing and a host of other oddities.

Based on my husband’s experience I would think that Influenza A and Encephalitis Lethargica are linked. We’re lucky, he did not die and he is not catatonic but it has certainly changed how we live.

If anyone knows of current research for this please email me at andreajohnson916@gmail.com

also, while in the catatonic state, they suffer psychosis. seeing horrible hallucinations, as if they were in a nightmare. scientist believe that this is because, like in Normal sleep, if pressure is put on the body, the brain will think that the body is trapped or in danger, and will generate a horrifying image to wake us up.

unfortunately for the victims of sleepy sickness (gosh thats a horrible name)they cannot wake up. they are condemned to age while trapped in that nightmarish state

I have been living with YOPD for 13 years, and the medicine the patients received in the clinic was L-dopa, a precuror to sinement that is considered a gold standard of PD treatment for many patients with this chronic condition. And the simarilities to the reaction of the patients is strikingly similiar. If you take to much Sinement (Carbidopa/Levodopa) you experience erratic body movements, and issue of mania and other side effects.

But, Flu Epidemic and sleeping Sickness followed right WWI, where many chemical agents were used as weopans in large nnumbers. And PD has a similiar distinction that it first discovered at the beginng of the Industrial age in 1817 by a london doctor named James Parkinsons who wrote an essay called Shaking Palsy.

In Baltimore and in Northern California a few men had developed a new derivative of heroin which caused instant paralys after using this drug. The Clinical drug is now called MPTP, which is now used to study ways to develop treatments for PD using animals to try new treatments.

Consudering PD is thought to be caused by the loss of the chemical Dopamine in the brain,

But. the movie starts out with some interresting clues about how this disease started in a young boy, He is described by jis mother as an avid reader and was a good student, but the mother and one of his teachers noticed that is writing became harder to read because of his writing necame smaller in print, and eventually succumbed to one morning his mother was unable to wake him. He was sent to hospital where he spent in a comatose state for many years.

The Doctor, Oliver Sacks was sent to this hospital that had many patients that suffered from this condition, and one morning he noticed one lady who could barely move caught her glasses in her hands before they hit the floor. So in some ways the brain is able to function, but the body is frozen in place.

The Young Man is given the first trial of L-dopa, and after increasing the dose to a sufficient level, he awakens and returns to almost normal state, but he still acts as a young teenager although he is in his late 40’s or early 50’s. They wventually get approval from the medical board to try to awaken the rest of these patients, Such a wild scene, one moment tou have many patients unable to move, and slowly the place is pure bedlam. All these patients think it is the year they were first struck with this condition, although in most cases many years has been lost.

Examples of touch, music, changing environment like the floor pattern, and dancing and other therapies made as much difference to these people’s lives as well as the medicine.

But, more medicine was needed to keep these patients active, which caused many sad side effect that were in physical, and physcological in nature, and the young man was returned to comatose state, just like the rest of them.

The movie ends, but because of this doctor’s observations, he made the biggest advance in PD treatment that in the field of medical field has not been repeated since then.

Do I think another repeat of sleeping sickness or an epidemic of increased cases of PD in the future, YES.

Just look what Crystal Meth does, or why in America, the fastest growing group of PD patients in America are the migrant workers that work in the fields of California picking our produce, And China isn’t exactly have a stellar image on environmental issues. And the battlefield of Iraq may be another place.

But, I hope I am wrong, but Bush hasn’t been very good advocate for medical research and he sure has no conscience on social issues either.

Davud W Walker