 |
 |
Dear Listmembers dear Barbara Patterson Thank you Barbara for your welcome. I have been reading these days (or trying to!), but it is quite difficult for me to understand because of the many abbreviations and also because english is not my usual language. So please excuse my english. I cannot do it better than that. Thank you. I am Swiss citizen, german mother-tongue, but since 1990 living in Portugal, because my husband is portuguese. One of my very best friends here, Amalia, has PD (diagn. about 20 ago). She is now 49. As a foreigner, I do not know things very well in Portugal and I would do everything I can to help her, but it is difficult to obtain a) information and b) adequate med. care. I only know Amalia now for 2 years and it took me some time until I discovered that something was wrong with her health. Amalia did not know very well the "kind of illness" she suffered - people in this part of the country are not always knowing about things - so I asked her to show me the medicaments, because I wanted to find out which kind of help could be given to her. She showed me Sinemet and Pazolan, besides Antidepressiva and sleeping pills (and many others which she had stopped to take). These medicaments had been pres-scribed to her some YEARS ago and the only thing her doctor did in all these years was to renew the recipes when they went out of validity. There was no check-up, no analyses, no suggestion to see a neuro-doctor, nothing. When I saw Sinemet I immediately thought of PD and I asked her, if she was ever told to suffer PD. Oh yes, that's the word, that's what the family doctor said to me some 20 years ago... Somebody might think, it's her own fault, but no, people here are living very simple and most of the modern knowledge or technologies did not yet reach until here, this mountain part of Portugal. And the public medical system does not offer what in other parts of the world is considered as normal. So if a disease is more or less supportable for the ill person and does not ask for hospitalization, they live with the illness. In the last weeks my friend feels very bad. She awakes with her face all swollen, terrible head-ache, more trembling than before and anuble to sleep even with calmant. I joined this group with a great wish to learn in order to be able to help. Here is what I mostly would like to know: 1. which kind of specialist we have firstly to consult 2. how often should further (normal) checks occur 3. which kind of analyses have to be made and how often afterwards 4. is there any organization in Portugal known by you (we did not find) Please excuse if this list is not the right place for these questions. It is the only address I found out and being so sad seeing my suffering friend, I just risked to catch at the unique straw I saw. I wish all the best to everybody and send a heartful of good thoughts to all of you. Best regards, Silvana Seilaz, Portugal