This was our first year in a new, more central, location.  The inner-city ambience included organ practice in the church overhead and motorbikes being started outside the window, which certainly prevented anyone from dozing off.  Not that proceedings ever got dull enough for that.

Katherine White chaired the meeting.  After bringing us up to date on the events of the last year she introduced our Treasurer, David Leen, who explained what our new charitable status will mean. Everyone was pleased to see our President, Deana Kenward, back at the head of the table after her absence at the last AGM. Deana celebrates her sixtieth and the ADSHG’s twenty first birthday this year and she was presented with a bouquet of flowers to mark her work on our behalf.

Alyson Elliott then brought us up to date on the membership database.  She was followed by Nick Willson who outlined the opportunities for enhanced communication through an electronic bulletin board. Katherine then introduced Professor John Wass, who spoke on the subject of  ‘You and your GP’. 

Professor Wass’s talk proved to be considerably more than this and was a genuine confidence booster. It’s impossible to overstate the relevance to the group of the contributions from specialists such as Professor Wass in explaining the nature of our condition and how to manage it.  At times it’s easy to be baffled by science, to feel that perhaps you’re making an unnecessary fuss and to be unsure of your ground. The Professor’s approach was easy to understand (it had to be easy if I could understand it), very informative and highly reassuring. 

Our sincere and heartfelt thanks to the Professor and to endocrine nurse, Judith Kisalu, who came to demonstrate the emergency injection technique and reiterate the importance of being able to do when you are not feeling your brightest. Some members had travelled to London specifically for the demonstration and we are grateful to Judith for giving up her time so selflessly for us.

Time for a quick cup of tea and a catch-up with old friends, and perhaps  some new ones, before the hall had to be cleared.  Someone suggested to me that we were possibly doing ourselves no favours using the term ‘Addison’s disease’ because of all the negative connotations associated with the word ‘disease’. As I helped to stack the chairs and tables away I considered how healthy all those present had looked, and how hard everyone had worked, and that perhaps they had a pertinent point.

We plan to publish Professor Wass’s lecture on the website in the September 2005