I lost an acquaintance to mad cow disease about three years ago. This happened in the Province of Alberta, Canada. He thought he may have gotten it in Cuba on a holiday, but he wasn't not sure. A friend of his on the same holiday also died of mad cow disease.

Last year my husband began behaving strange, would never talk my word on anything, saying mean remarks, not like him. At the end of January 2012, I hit the roof and told that it had to stop and stop fast. He made a doctor's appointment because he had a slight tremor in his hands. Our doctor booked some test. He was called by the doctor's office a week later to pick up some more test and just in a couple of weeks we had gone to full tremors, with problems speaking, and to shuffling his feet when he walked, within four weeks we was seeing a specialist that called it Parkinsonism. He was placed on medications for Parkinson's disease.

My husband died of Mad Cow Disease in Jan. of 2003. He began symptoms in Oct of 2002, loss of some memory, "off the cuff" statements he had no knowledge of why he made such a statement, quit driving in Dec of 2002. Then all went downhill fast, memory, balance, quit talking completely. Doctors were thoroughly puzzled. Here was a 74 year old man, still playing Senior Softball on a team (Tournaments and all) and he has all the above symptoms. When he died they did a brain autopsy at UofC, San Francisco, to find definite cause.