In this two-episode series we follow Swedish patient advocate Sara Riggare’s journey from being an insecure teen who doesn’t want anybody to know about the weird symptoms she’s experiencing to becoming a badass advocate for patients’ rights.

Sara Riggare coined the Swedish term ‘spetspatient’ for patients who ‘know more than their doctor’. She is changing the Swedish healthcare system by demanding doctors to stop seeing these patients as a pain in the ass and to start taking their knowdledge, skills and experience seriously.

But Sara didn’t just come up with these ideas out of the blue. This first episode is full of Sara’s own #DoctorDrama: from her first neurologist who said her symptoms were all in her head to the one who simply declared: “You have Parkinson’s, have a good day”. But we also hear how Sara is actually glad she didn’t discover she had Parkinson’s until her thirties.

If you liked the first episode with Sara Riggare, you will surely love this second one. In this episode, Sara Riggare tells us how she expanded her patient advocacy. We talk about the way healthcare is not well equipped to deal with the needs of chronic patients and Riggare explains how medicine started out in times of war, and how medicine’s hierarchical structure is well suited for treating acute illnesses but not chronic ones. Chronic patients need doctors who cooperate and who are not afraid to admit that sometimes, patients know more than their doctor.

There is a magazine called Fokus. It’s like Sweden’s Time Magazine. Fokus’ 2018 Swede of the year in medicine was Sara Riggare. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2003. 18-years after her first symptoms first appeared. Riggare, co-chair of the Patients Advocate Committee for WPC2019, is self-described as a Parkinson’s “im”-patient. A chemical engineer by trade, she returned to school and is a PhD candidate researching digital self-care for Parkinson’s. Riggare is a proponent of making use of the possibilities of technology and the World Wide Web to benefit individuals with Parkinson’s and empower them with knowledge. “From doing that,” Riggare says, “I learned to observe my body more consciously and I think I’m more attuned to how my body works and the medication effects it.”