With the exception of the folks in this support group, I do not peronally know anyone with PD. But my experience with getting a diagnosis has generslly been consistent with most of the other folk here...a long time to get a diagnosis . Every test known to modern medicine, repeated many times by different people in different hospitals, on different planets ( not really but I wouldn't want to rule out anything) and still a hesistant diagonosis , e.g., a long list of what has bern ruled out, a long list of symptoms, some of which could possibly indicate PD ( or something else). Next step would be to consult with those guys -or gals- in Las Vegas who calculate tthe odds fo races , football games, and boxing matches to give us the odds for it being PD. And then flipping a great number of coins, and then hedging their bets by calling it idiopathic PD. This is by no means a criticisn of any of my 974.5 doctors. They were smart, competent , diligent, and compassionate. Diagnosing PD is just very, very difficult and it takes however long it takes. They are working on ways to definitively diagnose it. I'm not sure hiw to plug into the research going on but I would imagine the folks at Mayo could have some ideas or contacts. The one thing that might help shakeva diagnosis fall out of the tree is keeping a precuse record of your symptoms Nothing should be dismissed be cause something that you might think is unrelated might actually be a key that unlocks an answer. For instance, mot folks wouldn't think their doctor would care that their fingrrnails break easily and that they're always cold. But these are the smptoms of low thyroid, and need to be treated. The more reliable and complete info your doctor has, the better diagnosis he can make. We need to do things like this to help our doctors help us.;-)