Patient stories

On these pages, you find testimonials from patients and caregivers, reporting about their way of coping with a severe disease. By sharing experiences with others, people can make a positive change in the lives of others living with severe diseases. Connecting and sharing knowledge with other patients and with the medical community is the key to deeper insights.

Allergy

Rita Hayward copes well with her large family, despite all but one of her children suffering from allergies. The coping strategies she employs for the management of so many conditions may be effective, but have had a tremendously stressful impact on her daily life.

Read more about Rita and her family coping with allergies

Crohn's disease

They may not know her by name, but sixteen-year-old Ally Bain is a hero to many people with Crohn's. She has proven that one voice really can make a difference - that is, if you are brave enough to share a story that most people would choose to forget.

Read more about Ally Bain's fight for people with Crohn's disease

Epilepsy

Sometimes, perspective changes everything. Consider the day Michele Walz and her husband proudly presented their daughter Rachel, then three and a half, with her first bike – a red tricycle. "Rachel thought it was so cool, but when she sat on it, she just couldn't make it move," says Walz, from New Jersey.

Read more about Michele's familis experiences with epilepsy

Rheumatoid arthritis

Alice Peterson was a promising tennis player from a young age. Alice loved tennis. It was her passion. She played on the UK junior tennis circuit and won a tennis scholarship to study at a university in the US. Alice started to notice pain in her right hand and put the discomfort down to a sports injury. The pain seemed to come and go... until she was playing in the finals of a tournament and couldn't even hold the racquet properly. She was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) at 18 years of age and never played tennis again.

Read Alice's story about living with rheumatoid arthritis