In my retirement I decided to re-learn to paint. I happily painted for more than 10 years. Then this spring I decided to improve my artwork by taking an online drawing course: Drawabox.com 7 lessons, each divided into 3 parts. I couldn’t complete the first third of the first lesson! The lesson made me draw in a manner that showed my Essential Tremors.
For many years I’ve been living with and the past 10 painting with Essential Tremors. I always managed to find a workaround to my tremors. But this time was different. I couldn’t use my usual cheat of rotating the paper to draw a straight line. I had to draw the curve, shakey line and all.
I got mad and my tremors got worse. You know the feeling, strong emotions make the shakes worse. You know what this means? “This means war!” Yes, I decided to declare war on my Essential Tremors.
General Sun Tzu said; “Know thy enemy”
... and I didn’t know anything about Essential Tremors other than it was affecting me and my Quality of Life (QFL). Getting factual, truthful information about Essential Tremors is a daunting task.
Where can I discover quality information about Essential Tremors?
Facebook
Reddit
Medical Journals
Hospitals and Movement Treatment Centers
.org
Blogs
Any other sources?
Let’s take a quick look at each of these potential sources.
Facebook wasn’t my first choice when I started my research. There are several reasonable active Essential Tremor groups on Facebook. (Facebook 🔍 Essential Tremors). It’s a great place to chat with others. Suffers from a high noise to signal ratio. Low on quality information. Watch out what you say. If the moderators do not like what you say, you can be banned without recourse or appeal. I also know of one Facebook Essential Tremor group that was deleted by Facebook itself presumably for content.
Reddit doesn’t have the volume of posts that Facebook has and so lacks the volume of response.
Medical Journals have several faults for the non-medical person to stumble over.
The full text is not always available. You can only read the abstract. The full document may be paywalled to you.
They speak with a different vocabulary. It’s learnable but it makes accessing the information more difficult
They are human and make mistakes like all of us do. There are extensive references in these papers which may amplify minor details to a degree that is out of proportion to their importance.
Hospitals and Movement Treatment centers unfortunately have a built in bias: profit, so “caveat emptor”.
National and International Tremor Organizations (.org) are good and unbiased but limited in information. These organizations are not a prolific source of information possible due to understaffing and underfunding.
Blogs. There should be many Essential Tremor blogs. My own survey via Google was a disappointment. The first 100 or so ‘blogs’ google lists are either commercial institutions, hospitals, treatment centers or organizations. I did not find one personal blog on Essential Tremors!
If you have any other suggestions for information sources that deserve attention, please chime in and comment below.
I will post another installment on my experience with Essential Tremors in the next couple of days.
(Please note: This information should not be used as a substitute for medical treatment and advice. Always consult a medical professional about any health-related questions or concerns.)
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