“I was a mother with two children, a lawyer, and a not-so-bad golf player. One day I went to my GP because my handwriting was getting smaller and my fingers started to shake on my right hand. A week later I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. They told me it was degenerative, progressive and incurable. I was devastated. I cried on the couch for months. Eventually I thought to myself, I should stop crying and do something about this. There must be another way! I was never the sort of person who gives up on things easily, you see. So I spent the next eight years working out what Parkinson’s was about. I started blogging about my experiences around the same time because people wanted to hear my story. In the following months, it made it into the top 40 recommended medical blogs in the US. But I was very frustrated that there was nothing going on in Ireland at the time. One evening I set up a charity page, designed the logo and named it Move for Parkinson’s. As Einstein says, ‘Nothing happens until something moves.’ And it proved to be true; with life, with research, and with Parkinson’s too.
Mags Mullarney, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awardee 2013, Founder of Move 4 Parkinson’s