Returned yesterday morning after a great trip to Indore. The patient’s session was fabulous. It began on the 7th morning in the small hall where members from Pune, Bangalore, Bombay and Indore chapters made presentations – Bangalore (Murlidharan) on their activities with special emphasis on the street plays, Pune (Yashodha) on the activities of Pune chapter and Sanvedana especially the marriage bureau, Mumbai (Kavita) spoke about our activities especially about the therapeutic effects of drama and Indore (Madhavi) spoke on their chapter activities.   Dr. Garima an MBBS from Indore spoke on her life with epilepsy and the work she does with children from the slums. After the presentations we had a lively interaction with the audience.
The next session (K.S. Mani) had a lot more patients (>100) and the large hall was filled to capacity. After presentations on prevention of epilepsy, we had patients talk about their lives ( Santosh and Bevinda represented Mumbai) especially with respect to employment. This was supposed to be a debate with a difference in that no teams were selected for or against an issue – their lives were supposed to reflect whether they thought epilepsy hampered their education/job/marriage/ prospects or not. Unfortunately none of them were married but they stated that independence came first, then marriage.
After this there was ‘Self Expression’ where patients were given 1 minute each to talk about themselves. This was followed by 1 minute games. Prizes were then awarded to the winners.
Dr. Nadkarni the organizing secretary of ECon 2010 also arranged trips for us to Ujjain and well as Omkareshwar. As soon as Saranga provides me with pictures I shall upload them. ECon 2011 will take place in Ludhiana. With love and good wishes,
Carol
