I am honored and absolutely blown away by the amazing comments and feedback from speaking on Thursday 29th September at the medical training day held at Belfast city hospital. This is the second year the training day has been organized through the Huntington’s disease Association Northern Ireland and this year attendees received a certificate for attendance which was certified. I was asked to speak at the event where 80 health professionals were registered; I was there to inform them what it is like to be a carer for a Huntington’s patient from a very young age. One very long evening I sat at the kitchen table with my mother and wrote out my presentation which was basic to the point and only around 8 slides long. I then wrote my notes out to go along with the presentation. I made sure to keep it short and to the point and this is a rather difficult thing to do when you are a complete chatter box like me! Working full time leading up to the event made it difficult to prepare. I will admit I probably could have done more but it was difficult as I was working long hours and unsociable hours. In the end I got it all done, the morning of the event was manic and stressful but with the help of Stephen and family I managed to get myself packed and into the car on route to Belfast. On arrival i assisted in setting up for the training evening, and tried to hide my nerves, health professionals started to arrive, and we had a small buffet and cup of tea before we got started.
I headed up to the lecture theater
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to practice and get my PowerPoint opened on the computer we were using. I was the third to speak, Errol who is a support worker within the Huntington’s disease association NI (HDANI) and also has a personal connection spoke; this was after Jennifer the chair of HDANI spoke and welcomed everyone to the training evening. I got up and presented my thoughts and feelings on what it is like to be a carer for my father who suffers from Huntington’s disease, and how that has affected me. The one thing I would ask anyone who watches the YouTube video or reads this blog is to take one line from my presentation. “If you want to get to know your patient, get to know your carer” I would like to thank this opportunity to thank HDANI for inviting me to speak at their event, Alice from Bluebell Photography for videoing it and everyone who attended and gave me their attention! Their kind words after the event was phenomenal. My dreams are coming true, in raising awareness for Huntington’s disease and I hope to be invited to more events like this one! Please see below the link to my YouTube channel where the video of my speech is: