As he told to the Patients Like Me web, February 2009 I am JiePie from Belgium. In 2000 I started suffering from urinary and sexual problems. All medical visits I made by different doctors can't find anything that was causing this problem, so what? I learn to live with this. A bit later I got some balance problems. I got medication for this but after 6 months still the same. On an early morning when the alarm of the house went on, I jump out of bed and switch it off and on again. One hour later (3: AM) the alarm went on again. Out of bed again! My lovely wife found that it took much longer for me to get the alarm off. She was just willing to come out of the bed when she Shaw that the door of the bedroom was opening very slowly and that my legs were just gliding into the door opening. Due to the thick carpets she didn't hear any noise. In a few seconds she was beside me. I was lying on the ground and couldn't stand on my feet's. When she tried to get me up she couldn’t do this. She helped me to turn me on one side and than bit by bit I was crawling to get on my knees to get up again. It took more than 15 minutes before this was all done. We went back to bed and could sleep a bit for the rest of that early morning. A week later we went to the doctor and told about it. He advised to go to a neurologist. The neurologist was doing some test and concluded that I probably had epilepsy! He started a medication scheme. I got so many side effects from all this pills that he changed 3 times from pills. After 9 months my wife told the neurologist that she didn't believe I was suffering from epilepsy. She starts telling him what I did over night. She could no longer sleep as I was jumping with my legs all the time. So he advised to go into the hospital and to go for MRI and all that kind of stuff. 2005. So now I was diagnosed as having Parkinson Disease. Again, the building up from a medication scheme that was supposed to get good results after 3 to 4 months didn’t work. No way, it was getting worse. They double the doses and wait and see.... Again after a year, my wife insisted to go to the hospital for 3 days and forced the neurologist to do a maximum of test on me to get a clear picture of me. The neurologist confirmed that I had Parkinson Disease and added some new medication. In the letter he made for the generalist who keeps our medical record, my wife found down on the bottom a remark - " the new medication should help except if the patient have one of the rear variants of Parkinson +, MSA -Shy Dragger -... She started to investigate on the Internet about those diseases and she was convinced that I had MSA. Desperately she was getting in contact with some close friends as she had hard to cope with this verdict. After a few weeks she started to tell me about MSA and what could be possible. The more she was reading about this illness, the more she knew that it was MSA, as I got most of the common symptoms. 2007. We went to an other neurologist and indeed he confirmed that I have MSA, although in Belgium, their is little research made on this. Each time I am suffering from something, they say: "this is due to your illness... I get a lot ups and downs and I have the impression that on a regular basis, some symptoms are becoming more expressive than in other periods. For the 3 year in a row I have a lot of difficulty's in breathing, freezing and extreme low blood pressure (from December till February) Once March it becomes a bit better but than I get other symptoms as extremely sweating on my shoulders and head. 2008. I am using for over 2 years conveen condom catheter day and night as I don't like pampers. With the catheters we can still go out for a drive in my electric wheelchair. My wife is putting him in and out the car all the time and fixes it as a real F1 Mechanic lady. My breading is under control a bit by using Puff's, inhalation and sleeping in a more or less sitting position. Once I am in bed I can't move any more. My lovely wife is still doing every thing for me. 24hrs/7days a week. She is washing me, clothing me, cutting my food into little pieces that I still can eat very slowly as swallowing is becoming a big problem. Etc. 2009. For speaking I have now an "Tablet Touch Screen", I can type what I want to say and an other male voice is speaking it loud for me. We are laughing on the new man in our life, but it is a great tool to have this by hand. In medication I'm reducing as much as possible. 2 years ago I took 5mg from Permax and now only 1,5mg on a daily basis. 3 times Prolopa 250 and 0,2mg Fluodrocortisone daily. I have 5 days a week kinesiterapy and Logopedy. I have a battery of tubes ready to use if needed, like if I have a wound to heal them in a reasonable time (6 week instead of months) etc... Since 2 weeks I got a Medrol cortisone treatment and it did a little wonder. I can turn my head again, the stiffness is much lesser, the speech is a bit better and my lungs are breading on a more or less normal noise level. But I don't sleep well at night. I thank my lovely wife that she is taking care of me all the time, over and over again. Every day her enthusiasm is giving me the courage to fight again day by day. She is busy to create a patients support group in Belgium and works on our web page for the MSA-AMS.be. That's it for now folks. Have a nice day and take care Love JiePie PS: sorry that my English is not perfect, but I'm sure you understand the basic of my story. Feb. 2009