Summary of Meeting - August 23, 2003

If you were at the meeting it was good to see you, and if you weren't we missed you.

Our 2nd meeting on August 23 was very informative. Our speaker was Dr. Adam Kaplin, consulting psychiatrist to the TM Center at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Kaplin is also on the medical advisory board of the TMA.

Dr Kaplin discussed Demoralization and Depression in TM. Through his research he has found that depression may be caused by a physiologic change in the brain after TM. He found that the level of depression did not correlate with the level of disability. In other words the more disabled a person was, didn't necessarily mean they were the ones that were more depressed. Dr. Kaplin would like anyone who feels they may be suffering from depression, to please discuss this with your doctor so it can be treated. Unfortunately TM is not 100% curable, but with the proper treatment depression is 100% curable. This alone may help you feel better, have more energy, sleep better, etc. etc.. Look for Dr. Kaplin's full article on this subject in the next TMA newsletter.

I would like to thank Dr. Kaplin for coming out on a beautiful Saturday to speak with our group. It was very enlightening, and everyone enjoyed his presentation. I would also like to thank him for donating the Honorarium that Pfizer was giving him for this talk, to the TMA. You just can't find a more committed person to the cause. Thanks! Dr. Kaplin.

The group also discussed the possibility of publishing a cookbook written by members of the TMA. This is a great fundraiser. All we need from you are your recipes. Please send them and when you do include your name, age, level of TM, any helpful hints you found to help you cope with your disease, how long you have had TM. We would also like to include our members who are children, please send any artwork they have made along with the other information, to help brighten up the pages in between recipes. We would love to see this book reflect the interesting, colorful, resourceful people that make up the TMA. Please send them to Alan Connor at ravenalan@cablespeed.com or 117 Foxhound Dr., Glen Burnie, MD 21061 or Mary Kercher at mkercher@aol.com or 8470 Old Warehouse Landing Rd., Port Tobacco, MD 20677. We need these ASAP to hopefully have these available for the holidays, they make great little gifts.

We may be looking for a new place to meet. Snyder's cannot guarantee that we can have their private dining area each time, and when you have a speaker it is necessary. We also found that during a presentation as good as the wait staff is, they can be a little distracting. We are going to look into meeting rooms with a buffet type of set up.

Sandy Siegel would like information on any physician or therapist who you feel has a good understanding of TM patients that you would refer to other people with TM. He would like to put together a referral list together for people who need a physician or therapist in a specific area. Please e-mail him the name, address, specialty and if they are accepting new patients. He is particularly interested in Neurologists, Urologists, Physiatrist, Physical and Occupational Therapists.

Sandy would also like the name and information of any of the above that you feel would benefit from attending the TM Symposium in August 2004. We would like to send them an invitation. Physicians need a certain amount of CME's and they are going to be offered for attending the symposium, so encourage your physicians to go, and send the information to Sandy at
or 1787 Sutter Parkway, Powell OH, 43065-8806.

It may be difficult to get a good size group and a speaker in the summer. We had several people who wanted to come but were away or had other obligations. The group decided that it would probably be best to exclude the summer months from our meeting schedule, so we will still meet three times a year, but from September through May.

Hope to see you at the mext meeting. We are shooting for the first half of November. More TBA.

Take Care,

Kelly Connor