Visualizing Parkinson's disease

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Partekatu

I'm Argiñe Gallastegi, from San Sebastián. i'm 48 years old. I'm already married. I have two children, aged 16 and 10, with Parkinson’s disease.

I started from the left side of the body: the left arm, the leg and the foot... I felt stiffness and pain in my muscles; I also felt a lot of pain. I started with traumatologists, back and forth, rehab... And some things were corrected for me, but some things were not. Then I went to a neurosurgeon and they gave me other tests, like a brain scan. From there I went to the neurologist, who told me that I had Parkinson’s.

It has been difficult for me to accept the disease since I was diagnosed three years ago. I didn’t say it publicly, among friends and in the family, yes. Now I want to say that I have this disease, and if it helps others, well...

It was a big blow, because I knew very little about Parkinson's. I thought it was a disease of the elderly, and I didn't know many things. So, it was pretty tough. The doctor told me that it was an intractable, chronic, degenerative disease. And those words were very serious for me.

I received the diagnosis on March 1, 2007. I will never forget that day. I continued to work and, at the same time, entered into a trial program for a new drug. It was a very bad experience: I did not sleep, I was very tired... And I had to quit both the job and the new drug test.

Now, I'm trying to make the life I used to make, but at a slower pace. The treatment is for life. The problem I've had from the beginning is that I tend to have big ups and downs. I mean, when the pimples I take have an effect, I'm fine, but as that effect goes down, I kind of go down.

I heard about the Aspargi association and I got in touch. I saw that there are many young people who also have Parkinson’s; it’s not just a disease of the elderly. I come here once a week, but I do exercises at home every day. This is a type of physiotherapy aimed at this disease. There is also logopedia, we also have massages because they are very important to relieve this muscle stiffness, psychological support is also very important... I hope that, thanks to the work done by the researchers, something will be invented as soon as possible; that they will find a substitute for this levodopa or some other treatment.