Colin Reed (West, 1976-1981) has had many challenges and rewards during his career, but his greatest challenge now is Parkinson’s. Having left Cranleigh, Colin took a degree in Business management and his career has taken him to live in Asia, America and now Italy, where he is married to an Italian with two children. Colin has been a director of a number of companies.
He was diagnosed at the age of 46 with Parkinson’s and just as in his business career he saw this as a challenge not a set-back. “When you’re in front of life changing disease, you first look for a way out clause and when you don’t find one you either succumb or dig deeper,” he said. “I spoke to many Parkinson’s specialists and came to realise that just giving pills to a person is not enough and forgetting that they have families means relatives suffer too.
“Early stage sufferers don’t have anybody to turn to for real solutions and effective therapy. This is fundamentally wrong. Early stage sufferers need help to avoid slipping into apathy and depression. What we need most is down to earth support and our family needs reassurance, to be involved and to understand how to help their loved ones. In short we need a road map to find our way out of despair.”
So Colin set up the European Parkinson Therapy Centre (a non-profit charity) in Boario Terme Italy, which has achieved wide acclaim internationally for its innovative research-based approach, showing people with Parkinson together with their families, that life with Parkinson brings change but there is a way of fighting back and maintaining a high quality of life. His charity and the centre is represented in 15 countries, operates a joint project with the British Parkinson’s association (Parkinson’s UK) and collaborates with leading universities and researchers.
Unlike many centers, families are welcome and as for many of the patients who leave the Centre, Colin said: “Parkinson’s turned out to be an opportunity to reassess my life and from that I have become stronger.”
For further information visit www.ParkinsonTherapy.com