Meet up

Due to writing my essay , I haven't had a chance to get on and write about the first meet up which was on Tuesday just past.

I was really nervous in the morning because I thought that no one would show up but I had a good friend reassure me that even if that was the case, it wouldn't be a bad thing as it takes a while for word of mouth to get around and the notice wasn't up on the  www.meetup.com website for very long.  So off I went with baby bottle in hand(which was supposed to be the identifying object on the table), with an optimistic attitude. For anyone who knows me, this is certainly a new thing!  I think that the difference was perhaps, the fact that for once in my life, I was doing something that I was 100% sure about and committed to. I had lived through the experience and it is important for me to help others as well as get different view points because not all experiences of PND are the same.

I was early, so got a coffee and spoke with the staff member who had reserved the table for us and thanking her for doing so. The only negative point was that we were in the other room and for people who maybe were not familiar with the coffee shop, would not have known to go through to the other room. Also , having PND doesn't always give you the confidence to go into a new place and it takes a lot of courage to even leave the house let alone go searching for complete strangers!  i think that this will be something that we could address for our next meet up but all in all, the place was lovely adn very relaxing which certainly helped in calming the nerves!

I don't want to go into too much detail as it is confidential but a lot of the chat seemed to center around health professionals.  Again, people didn't feel that they were able to get much support and felt similar to myself that the treatment was quite cold. I want to point out that all health professionals are like this because they aren't. Some are very helpful in pointing you in the right direction, I am only speaking on behalf of myself.

We also spoke about the possibility of hosting these events in soft play areas as well as different areas throughout Glasgow as it may not always be possible for folk to attend in certain areas of the city for childcare reasons ect. I had also thought about the possibility of getting a discounted rate if there were enough of us that wanted to attend. The last thing I want to do is make it an issue money wise for people to attend as this isn't what the group is about, so any feedback would be very helpful.

All in all, I am happy with the result and I really hope to see some new faces!