Germany

On October 29. 2005 we held a meeting of the TM Support Group of Germany.  It was a wonderful meeting and it took a lot of time and energy to prepare.  It was a very emotional experience and the meeting surpassed my wildest hopes.  There were 14 people in attendance from all over Germany; nine of the people had TM and five were their caregivers.  I was so excited about our meeting that when I came home, I called Sandy in the United States to tell him about it. 

The group decided at the meeting that we would start a German TM Society.  This will take a lot of planning and work to arrange. 

In addition to planning our national support group meeting, I also received a grant this year to pay for having a number of important articles about Transverse Myelitis translated from English into German.  We are posting these articles on the TMA website in order to make this information more readily available to the German-speaking members of the TMA.  We also used the grant money to purchase the 2004 Symposium DVDs, office supplies and postage and we assisted some of our members with travel and lodging expenses for our support group meeting.  We have applied for another grant for this coming year in order to have more articles translated into German.  We will also have a version of the TMA brochure printed in German for awareness and to find new members in Germany.  Our major source of funding has been from the German insurance organizations.

It has been a very busy year, and the TM Support Group of Germany has accomplished a great deal of important work.  We have also been involved in regularly confirming the addresses, phone numbers and emails for our membership, and providing Sandy with updates to keep our information accurate.

If you live in Germany, please get involved in our support group. People from Austria and Switzerland are also invited to join us. If you live in Austria and Switzerland, please get in touch with me; I would love to hear from you.  We will all benefit from your participation. 

Take care,