Time to renew your membership

By Sharon Siddique
MDS president

Dear MDS members,

It is time to renew your MDS membership and we hope you would continue to stay with us on this journey. MDS has grown steadily since its launch in June 2007. As of December 2008 we have 170 members. We hope that you have found our many MDS activities over the past 18 months informative and useful. You can find highlights on our website.

We are honoured to have our MDS Adviser, A/P Au Eong Kah Guan, as our first speaker of 2009. He has kindly agreed to give a talk on “Artificial Vision”. The talk will be held on Saturday, 28 February 2009 from 2pm to 4pm at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, Seminar Room 1, 2^nd Level. Check out our website for more information.

Alexandra Hospital has also again generously allowed MDS to use its Seminar Room for some of our 2009 activities. So please note the following Saturday afternoons from 2 – 5pm at the AH Seminar Room. Details of the topics will be announced on our website closer to the dates: 16 May; 15 August; 28 November.

In addition to our formal meetings, we hope to also arrange small group sharing sessions, as well as encourage active participation in this blog. A membership renewal form will be sent to you via snail mail. We look forward to seeing you again.

If you have any questions, please contact MDS at alleyes@singnet.com.sg. You can also telephone Anne at 6238-7387.

Year in review

When the Macular Degeneration Society (MDS) of Singapore took its baby steps into 2008, it was barely six months old and still feeling its way around. Yet 12 months later, it can confidently look back at a year when it managed to achieve what the non-profit organisation set out to do – simply offer support to macular degeneration patients in Singapore.

It was nothing spectacular. After the bang that came with the society’s launch in June 2007 and the comprehensive mass media coverage, 2008 was a quiet year of consolidation and reaching out to the 170 members who joined the outfit. So in many ways, it was a year for the members.

Ten events were organised, with different themes and settings, catering to different segments of our membership base. These include small, intimate sharing sessions like the ones held in January and May, when members gathered to simply share their experiences, tips, advice, worries, hope and even some donuts!

In April, we held a small computer tutorial to teach members how to adjust the computer settings, optimising the equipment to help failing sight. And there were also the popular talks by experts, including NeuroVision’s in October and Eu Yan Seng on traditional Chinese medicine a month later.

The year saw MDS collaborate with the Glaucoma Patients Association and the Retinitis Pigmentosa Society to jointly organise events for members of the three self-help groups. Of course, MDS continued its support for the nation-wide AMD Awareness Week in September, hosting two support groups sessions in English and Mandarin.

The society also held its inaugural annual general meeting, where it elected a new executive committee to serve for two years. Founding president Sam Fong, who helped set up the outfit in June 2007, stepped aside for Sharon Siddique, who was the secretary, to take over the top post.

Last, this blog was set up at the start of the year to better connect with the members. It is a portal for MDS members to enjoy worldwide news about macular degeneration, as well as updates on the society and its activities. This post, incidentally, is the 50th. A nice number to round off the year.

The new year, 2009, will see the society continue where it left off – more talks, more sharing sessions and more opportunities to get to know each other better. Because that is what it is all about at the end of it all – a support group for us.

To see photos of the events held this year, go to the MDS website and click on 2008 Events.

Have a Merry Christmas and Healthy New Year. See you very soon!

Do you have hallucinations?

If you see weird images, don't worry, you are not mentally ill or having dementia. It is actually your brain trying to make sense of the images sent to your brain, as a result of the damaged eyes. Experts call it the Charles Bonnet Syndrome - a purely medical condition.

Charles Bonnet (above) is the Swiss naturalist who first mentioned this syndrome in the 18th century.

In Britain, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists is issuing new guidelines to all eye specialists to explain the condition. This is to ensure that eye patients are correctly diagnosed and not sent for psychiatric treatment.

"People have been sent for psychiatric treatment as if they were beginning to suffer symptoms of dementia," Tom Bremridge, of the Macular Disease Society of UK, told the BBC.

"And no-one, neither the doctor nor the patient, knew that these were symptoms of macular degeneration. But it really is quite common and very distressing for people.

"Doctors will tell people they have an eye condition, what it is and what the result is as far as their vision is concerned, but they haven't considered the psychological effects - and especially hallucinations."

Dr Dominic Ffytche, a leading psychiatric specialist in the syndrome, said: "This is a very important new development. These hallucinations are often an unexpected consequence of the loss of vision, so the more knowledge that is out there the more patients will be able to talk about the phenomena and hopefully relieve the distress that they cause."

To read more, click here.

Charles Bonnet syndrome: It is named after the Swiss naturalist who described the condition in 1760. He first documented it in his 89-year-old grandfather, nearly blind from cataracts, who saw men, women, birds, carriages, buildings, tapestries and scaffolding patterns.