About The Author - Christopher Evans
Christopher is an expert in his field and specializes in human rehabilitation, with almost two decades of clinical experience and runs a modest private practice in Kent UK.
Having studied extensively at both undergraduate and post-graduate level, his background training includes 5 years of human anatomy, physiology, orthopaedics, neuro-anatomy, clinical neurology, neural science etc, which gave Christopher initial insight into Parkinson’s disease. Early in his career during the late 90’s Christopher worked with a number of Parkinson’s disease patients. It was a desire to help his patients which led him to explore the subject further, combined with frustration at limitations of treatment which was the driving force behind this long journey of research to find a more satisfactory solution for his patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Working closely with sufferers
Christopher on occasion has had the good fortune to treat patients in their own home, which he says “Provides enormous insight into patient’s lives and is completely different to seeing a patient in a clinical situation”. Christopher had literally entered the minds and lives of sufferers and their families and felt their feelings of utter entrapment. Most people can relate to these feelings of being trapped in some way. For Christopher, this acted as a powerful catalyst in an attempt to “un-trap” the sufferer. “I fear for the future of the aged population especially those with disease,” he says. “I think awareness is poor. If more people saw this illness on TV, it would provide a powerful image and more would be done.”
Understanding Parkinson's Disease
Understanding anatomy and the function of the brain obviously helps. The limbic system, for example, functions as the emotional centre of the brain. It deals with pleasure/ pain, fight/flight and memory. This is why we remember intensely pleasurable or painful sensations and is one region where Parkinson’s disease manifests.
“To get a deeper understanding of what people go through, I metaphorically step into their shoes, or to be more precise step into their mind, like an actor playing a part. I engage with their feelings of loneliness, fear, frustration, pain, apathy, anger, sense of loss and isolation, along with many other emotions which give meaning to this sense of being trapped”, he says. This separates clinical work from research. With clinical work you see the person with a disease, their suffering and the effects this has on their lives and family. Research can be detached, disconnected, objective and somewhat removed from people and their suffering,
Thanks to the help and support of good friends he was able to write this book to share his thoughts which may lead to effective treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
