Author: SaraRiggare

Being a student of Health Informatics at the Karolinska Institute has introduced me to a number of interesting concepts. Already during our very first week in August of last year, we heard about “patient-centered healthcare”, “shared decision-making” and “patients as co-creators of health” and to a highly opinionated and severly inquisitive patient such as myself…… Continue reading Health 2.0 – “The patient joins the team”

We all know that excercise is good for us. We do. And those of us with PD know that for us excercise is more than good, it is essential. Yes, I know, we know it, but we don’t always act upon it. I spent my first 30 odd years actively avoiding every kind of physical…… Continue reading In your face PD!

Although Sweden’s national day is on the 6th of June (and incidentally wasn’t made a bank holiday until 2005…), the true national day of Sweden by any standards must be Midsummer’s eve. On the Friday closest to Summer Solstice everyone in Sweden with their own summer cottage will celebrate the longest day of the year together with…… Continue reading Swedish midsummer

Last year I did the the bravest thing I have done in my life. And to me being brave has very little to do with exposing yourself to all sorts of life-threatening activities such as parachuting or bungee-jumping or even riding a bicycle down a ski slope in Slovakia in the summer (one of my friends has…… Continue reading Being brave

My previous blog ended: “I did not get back to them”, and I did not. However, my mother did. In my medical record I found that exactly 2 years after my first visit, my mother called the clinic, worried about my deterioration. I was given another examination in October of 1989 and in the record…… Continue reading The first diagnosis

I think I was around 13 years old when I first realised that my body did not function the same way as others’, I might even have been younger. I remember sitting on a chair in a school, community centre or something similar in the village of Ängersjö in the north of Sweden listening while…… Continue reading The first meeting

I don’t presume to have a lot of regular readers and probably fewer still will have followed me from the beginning. Which is why I would not assume that anyone remembers at what age I had my first PD symptoms. However, for some strange reason they coincided in a slightly alarming way with the first…… Continue reading Downhill skiing

Have you heard the story of the Three Princes of Serendip? Serendip is Persian name for Sri Lanka and the story is alledgedly based on the life of the Persian King Bahram V, who ruled the Sassanid Empire (420-440), according to Wikipedia, our time’s equivalent to the Oracle of Delphi. Anyway, the princes of the…… Continue reading The joy of serendipity