Nothing's gonna stop me now!
- May 1, 2018
- 3 min read
I know this technically isn't brain tumour based but it certainly has stopped my taking part in this amazing research until now!
Friday 20th of April was an exciting day for me. For the last 3 years I have been closely following the research of Gyrogear, a company working on a way to help people with tremors and I’m not talking about a slight shake that you might get if you miss your caffeine fix in the morning, I’m talking about people who suffer from illnesses like Parkinson's & Essential tremor, where shaking can get so bad you have trouble dressing, eating and even carrying a glass of water. Gyrogear have been working very hard to help people like us be able to live better lives and become more independent.
I, myself suffer from Essential tremor, now E.T is a progressive neurological disorder so although I’ve had it most of my life, I can remember having it at least back into early senior school and it is something you learn to adapt to at least until it gets so bad that it really does start impacting your daily life. For me that was when I reached my mid thirties. There are several medications to try which can help but that really does depend on a person to person basis. The only other thing that can help when you really reach your limit of trying to live with it is having something similar to a pacemaker inserted inside of you and wires are attached to parts of your brain until they find the right frequency, so yes I’m talking about brain surgery. Now for some people I totally understand that being an option if it gets really bad but for myself after already having 3 brain surgeries it’s really not for me yet but never say never. Some places are also just starting trials for a treatment where the parts of the brain that cause the tremor are burned off in an MRI machine, it’s a long, expensive process but is showing good results so far from what I’ve read. Basically so far all the help for people with Parkinson's and E.T are all invasive type treatments whereas Gyrogear are working on something which is more likely to work without any nasty side effects, I mean you just can’t get any better than that in my opinion.
Paul and the rest of the team were so welcoming and very understanding so put me at ease quickly. They are now in there trial phases, of which there will be several but after taking the other Friday, I am very excited. I can’t reveal anything to much for copyright reasons which is totally understandable but I am genuinely excited about their progress. I tried several different prototypes, doing repetitive tasks so they could get there data which was the most important part of the testing. The most amazing part for me though was for the first time in over 2 years I got to hold something steady with no tremor at all for roughly a whole minute or at least that’s how long it felt to me! It totally blew me away! It was seriously one of the best moments I’ve had in a very long time. My last words can only really be Thank you, I feel so proud and blessed to have been able to take part in even such a small way with Gyrogear. Don’t give up hope fellow movers and shakers there are some very clever and talented people working out there to help make a lives a lot better and definitely a lot brighter!
BTBrummie x
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