The 7th April meeting of Anstruther Rotary welcomed Joan and Bengt Rambech as speakers. Their subject was PSP – Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. 

The meeting heard that PSP is caused by the death of nerve cells in the brain, leading to difficulty with balance, movement, vision, speech and swallowing. It is so called because it’s Progressive – it gets steadily worse over time, Supranuclear – it damages parts of the brain above the pea-sized ‘nuclei’ that control eye movements and a Palsy – it causes weakness. It is a condition that is sometimes thought of as ‘Parkinsons Plus’ or as a ‘bad cousin’ of Motor Neurone Disease. Diagnosis is difficult, but about 10,000 people in the UK are believed to be affected.

Joan explained the effects and progress of the disease from her experience in nursing her husband from 1996, when a slight tremor began to interrupt his work as a dentist, to 2010 when he died, aged 77, of the disease.

We heard too of Joan’s gratitude for the huge amount of support she and her husband received from the NHS. She especially mentioned the teams of District Nurses, Speech Therapists, Occupational Therapists and Marie Curie nurses.

In conclusion we learned something of the work of the PSP Association, which is dedicated to helping people with PSP and depends totally on voluntary donations. We heard too that April 14th – 19th is National PSP Awareness Week.

A vote of thanks, for a sobering and deeply personal talk, was proposed by David Barnett. More about PSP is at (www.pspassociation.org.uk