2015 conference

Just three months to go to this year’s conference, and some great speakers are lined up on the vital topic of treatment of Lyme disease. Our speakers are coming from far and wide, and we very much want to ensure that their voyages and the work they put into their presentations are worth their valuable […]

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How we brought the speakers from Heathrow to Guildford

Driving up to Guildford for the conference, coming from the West, we were delayed around Stonehenge. Hurriedly unloaded a car full of leaflets, exhibition stands etc and now the race to get to Heathrow, pick up the international speakers and get them back to Guildford in time for the conference dinner at 7pm. Packed Stephen […]

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Update on the conference, 5 July, 2014 – just five weeks to go…

This very belated post is a quick update on the conference, the date of which is looming! We all hope that it will prompt you to sign up to join us on Saturday 5th July – and perhaps to join us for friendly pre-conference introductions and chats on Friday night 4th July, too. The good […]

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LDA conference, Guildford, Saturday 5th July – four and a half months to go, and counting!

I’ve just, possibly foolishly, offered to help to organise the LDA’s 2014 conference, which is now just over four months away. (Is the date in your diary? I do hope so!) We’re revisiting (it will be our second year there) Surrey University in Guildford so, while most of the UK is currently focused, understandably, on […]

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The turn of a virus

I’ve heard lots of people talking about shingles over the years.  How nasty it is.  How debilitating.  I vaguely knew it was linked to chickenpox.  But I’d never seen it before. Until, that is, I managed to acquire shingles for myself. I confess that I became overtired and not a little stressed.  We are trying […]

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Alternative to A&E

It always happens at the wrong time. There I was trying to get all the lawns cut on the nice dry, sunny day before the rain came. I got to the end of one big lawn, lifted the cutter deck of the ride-on lawn mower and the lever came off in my hand with a […]

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Fast Forward >> Mind the gap!

In March I attended a talk at Exeter University entitled ‘The Emotional Body in Health and Illness’, by Professor Gillian Bendelow, Professor of Sociology at Sussex University.  Prof Bendelow worked as a ward sister in London’s East End, before becoming a psychiatric nurse and then pursuing an academic career in sociology. The subject of her […]

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Listen, please!

One of those moments when you wonder “what if I had done that…?”. What if, as I turned round from picking up my coffee at the conference reception and saw Sally Davies 10 yards away (the Dame Professor Sally Davies who is currently Chief Medical Officer) I had gone across to her and said “before […]

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Country mouse goes to town

Before 8 o’clock and far too early for me to be standing at a station waiting for the London train, though a bacon bap did help. 3 hours to Waterloo and I stepped into a different world a far cry from Devon. An invigorating world, a noisy world; a world where people seemed to be […]

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2013 – A Different New Year

Four years ago on January 12th we attended our local emergency department for the first time. My husband by that time was six months into a gradually evolving illness, characterised by tremendous fatigue, pain, head-pressure, memory problems, episodes of double vision, tingling in his hands and feet, tinnitus and a ‘green-gilled’ queasy ‘sea-sick’ feeling on […]

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