West Midlands support group organiser Guy reflects on the West Midlands Shakers March meet-up

The fourth meeting of the West Midlands Shakers group took place in Four Oaks, near Sutton Coldfield on Wednesday 25th March, with nine in attendance (and one apology from a member who has recently suffered two falls, an unfortunate issue associated with some tremors).

We were very pleased to host Paul Robinson, Patient Co-ordinator from Queen Square Imaging Centre in London, whose role is to raise awareness of the issues faced by people with tremors in their day-to-day lives and how they cope with them. This helps ensure that clinicians across the board (including dentists and opticians, as well as GPs and medical staff in neurological and related disciplines) are better informed and able to provide a more empathetic service, as well as understanding pathways to DBS and focused ultrasound treatment. This was Paul’s first meeting with a regional Essential Tremor support group, and he intends to visit as many as he can in the coming months to build up a portfolio of useful briefing material and first-hand accounts from people living with ET.

The group, as well as sharing ET histories and journeys, were updated on the agenda for the annual conference taking place in Newcastle this coming Saturday, and group leader Guy undertook to feed back any interesting session information and developments.

Finally, recognising, as we all do, that ET, OT and dystonia are best faced with humour, we drew up a list of suitable tasks we, the afflicted, could all do better than the non-afflicted. These included tambourine player, snow globe demonstrator, cocktail barista (mixing part only!) and being the backing troupe in a Bob Fosse musical with the world’s best jazz hands.

We look forward to meeting up again in three months’ time, when we should have sun rather than hail.

Guy

Further reading