Scott, Full blown Parsonage Turner Sydrome is uncommon.. There are far more attacks of the Brachial Plexus Nerves seen which resolve relatively quickly and are never diagnosed as Parsonage Turner Syndrome... BTW, I always think of it as Brachial Plexus Neuritis or Brachial Plexitis, as the old neurolgist who taught us at school had a policy of never naming a disease after the person who reported it in the journals... When I read your post I had to think hard for a few seconds to recover that PTS eponym from my aging memory... I'm sure they told you that the cause is unknown (personally, I'll bet you the farm that it is a viral nerve infection and possibly related to the Bulbar Poliomyelitis virus) and that complete recovery, or almost complete, is the usual outcome though the symptoms may linger for months to years... The majority of cases of Brachial Plexitis I see in my practice are mild and usually present as complaints of pain, without arm weakness and shortness of breath... I have a current case of Brachial Neuritis with some mild paresis that has come into my practice - after the initial diagnosis made at the university - who now is showing signs of full blown Post Polio Syndrome though he was never diagnosed with Polio in the past, so the waters are muddied a bit in this case... Anyway the good news is that your neuritis is probably not permanent... Possibly improvement can be hastened by using, L-carnitine, CoQ10, or d-ribose.<note I said, possibly> The bad news is that you tell us that you are overweight, underexercised, and I can guess that you have elevated cholesterol, early atherosclerosis, and hypertension... Time for you to "get religion", son... By that I mean, a low fat diet <vegetarian would be good>, supervised free weights exercise, walking 2 miles a day come rain, wind, or freezing sleet, and give up smoking <if you do>... Now, back to your boating plans, to keep this on topic: A shameless plagiarization on my part - Go small, Go cheap, Go now! denny --------------------------------- Blab-away for as little as 1"/min. Make PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.