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Hope makes you forget all the difficult hours

Soichiro Honda

The 5th World Parkinson’s Congress opened tonight in Kyoto, Japan. With about 3000 in attendance, from 55 countries, the opening session was joyous and tearful. The opening video began with a Crane swooping down into Kyoto. The Crane, in Japanese culture, represents hope. And much of the evening centered around hope.

The winning video was titled “Keep Hope Alive” and featured the late Tom Isaacs being interviewed by filmmaker Anders Leines.

Day 2

After last night’s wonderful conference opening, I looked forward to today’s activities.  The day started with a plenary session on Alpha-synuclean, the protein in our brains that gives us the gift of Parkinson’s.  The session was very technical, and my knowledge and understanding of cell biology was limited to what I studied way back in the dark ages, coupled with the damage done to my brain by that very protein.  

The next session for me was a 2 hour stint talking about my poster to anyone who seemed even mildly interested.  This was the first time I had submitted an abstract to any conference, and the first time I had to actually talk about my own research.  The poster is titled “What are the Most Important Factors for Living Well with Parkinson’s Disease?  An informal survey from a women’s Parkinson’s Facebook Group”.(P41.11)   I enjoyed talking to the people who stopped by, some of whom are readers of my blog and made the effort to come meet me.  I stressed that my results were based on what the People with Parkinson’s said works best for them, and then what are their biggest obstacles for living well with PD.  This is the patients point of view, not what their doctors or others say is best for them.  The high point was being interviewed on video by a v-logger.  The poster will be up until Friday so stop by to find out what the results of the survey.

The best part of being here is meeting up with friends from around the world and meeting people in person who have been following this blog. Here are a few photos from the day.