I’m running out of time.
That’s how James Richard Klingsborg – known as Rich – begins his harrowing plea for help. He is living through what he calls “a perfect storm of progressive, permanent brain damage.” Three rare and interacting conditions — a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak, infratentorial superficial siderosis, and triple-positive antiphospholipid syndrome — are destroying his health, while Swedish healthcare has left him to deteriorate.
Rich: his brain is being damaged as we speak
This was Rich before these conditions took hold in February of this year. Even though he was also living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) he still had some quality of life:
Rich explains that now:
My life is falling apart around me as I struggle within a healthcare system that has proved both indifferent to and incapable of diagnosing or treating this complex and rapidly worsening health crisis.
For six months he has been “repeatedly sent home from the emergency room,” despite visible neurological decline – and even psychosis. The leaking CSF causes brain sagging, vein rupture, bleeding, and iron toxicity. The latter is killing off nerves in his brain, leading to permanent damage – and it is this which is causing rich to experience psychosis.
Freiburg University Hospital in Germany, a world leader in CSF-leak treatment, has given him hope. They’ve confirmed his diagnosis and have a plan for targeted repair — “treatment ready and waiting,” as he writes — but cost is the only obstacle.
Rich describes his daily life as one of isolation and despair. He says:
It’s an absurd situation — to not receive the care you need in your own country — and profoundly uncomfortable to so publicly and literally have to beg for your life.
A creative soul who once loved sound and light, he now lives in near-darkness, unable to bear loud noise or movement:
The emotional toll is palpable. “No more listening to or making music… the things you take for granted suddenly become unbearably painful,” he writes. Each day without treatment risks further nerve death, deeper disability, and the permanent loss of independence.
Systemic failures
Sweden’s failure is not an individual oversight; it’s a systemic collapse around the world. A supposedly advanced healthcare system has let bureaucracy and ignorance consign a man to worsening neurological damage. Supposed rare-disease patients like Rich fall through cracks too wide to close — cracks widened by medical arrogance and ignorance. They’re also widened by the notion that diseases are rare – when in fact, they all-too-often not.
But crucially, it’s the notion – pushed by psychiatrists and adopted by mainstream medicine – that physical illness can somehow be psychomatic which is most damaging. As Rich describes in the below video, doctors think his and so many other people’s illnesses are somehow ‘all in their heads’ – when they are demonstrably not:
Rich writes,:
After six months of being repeatedly sent home… I’ve reached a terrifying crossroads: I’m now far too sick to keep fighting this uphill battle.
His words cut to the core of a state that prides itself on universal care yet forces its citizens to crowdfund survival.
He needs your support
Germany, by contrast, offers a clear route: advanced imaging, dynamic myelography and surgical sealing of the leak. It’s sophisticated, evidence-based medicine — but it costs money Rich doesn’t have. The fundraiser seeks 150,000 SEK to cover diagnostics and treatment.
Rich promises transparency:
Every donation, no matter how small, could be what saves my life… Any reimbursement will be refunded to donors.
What stands out most is his courage to write with such honesty. He jokes darkly about the surreal task of fundraising for your own life — “being told it has to be catchy and filled with cheerful photos of you so people will want to help.” Yet behind the gallows humour lies desperation:
Desperation and death anxiety are very strong motivators.
The Swedish health authorities should hang their heads in shame. A man shouldn’t have to explain his suffering to strangers because alleged medical professionals refuse to listen. Their delays have made his disease worse — his brain damage, pain, his tinnitus, his dizziness, psychosis, and paralysis, all avoidable with earlier intervention.
Rich’s case exposes a more profound truth: when systems stop seeing patients as people, they condemn them quietly. Bureaucracy becomes triage; neglect becomes policy. Sweden’s international image as a compassionate healthcare model means nothing to those it abandons.
Help Rich if you can
For Rich, however, there is still a window of hope. The specialists in Freiburg can act — but only if they reach them in time. “The care I urgently need is available and waiting in Germany, while I lie here rapidly deteriorating,” he pleads.
His situation shouldn’t exist. And yet, as he writes from his darkened room:
Time is running out.
Your donation could buy more than medical intervention — it could bring him back the sounds, lights, and sensations of a life worth living.
Please, if you can, give what you’re able. Share his story. Be part of the humanity that Sweden’s healthcare system has forgotten.
Donate to Rich’s fundraiser here.
Watch more of Rich’s story below:
Featured image and additional images supplied
