Our Muscle Group meetings are hugely important to MDUK, as it’s a great way to bring people together in local communities. We’ve always run these meetings in regions across the UK, with everyone with a muscle-wasting condition welcome to attend. Whether you’re newly diagnosed or you’ve been living with your condition a long time, whether you’re a parent, sibling, carer or anyone with a loved one who has a muscle-wasting condition, you’re welcome to join.
At the beginning of this year, our volunteer chairs and other regular Muscle Group attendees helped us decide how best to run these groups virtually. With their feedback, we’ve designed our virtual Muscle Group meetings to be as informal, social and fun as they were in person. For those who’ve been to one of our meetings so far, we hope you’ll agree!
Jane and Mark Field, volunteer chairs for our West Midlands Muscle Group since the Group began, can’t wait for their first virtual meeting, to see faces that they “know and love”.
Seeing others go away from the meetings with just one new piece of information that helps them and may change their life in some small way inspires us to help more.
We encourage anyone who may be considering joining a Muscle Group meeting to do so. What have you got to lose? There’s so much support and help available. Not necessarily on the first visit, but there is a nugget of information or friendship waiting for everyone!”
Karis Williamson attended the Scottish Muscle Group and said:
It was really great to attend the virtual Muscle Group Meeting for the North as it genuinely felt like a safe space where everyone really understood what we all experienced during Lockdown. It was also brilliant to be able to attend this meeting virtually as it felt more like everyone was on an equal playing field and everyone was more accessible.”
The meetings are 90 minutes long and the focus is to give you a space to talk with others living with muscle-wasting conditions about what matters to you,. You’ll also hear about what MDUK has been doing over the last year and what we can do to support you. It’s a great opportunity to ask the MDUK team any questions you have or raise any issues you’re having so we can do our best to help you.
So far we have had meetings for five of our Muscle Group regions, and it has been so lovely to see all of you again. Many of you have told us how pleased you are that we’re running these meetings virtually, and that being able to attend without worry about travel and parking makes Zoom meetings much more accessible.
At the meetings, we’ve talked about everything from what’s it been like to attend clinic virtually to skydiving to fatigue to finding the best physio to the impact of shielding on mental health to baking to Changing Places toilets. The meetings are led by what’s important to you!
There are meetings scheduled in a number of regions over the next month, and then we’ll be running the autumn meetings online too.
If you’d like to go to your local Muscle Group meeting this summer, please contact Calley Clay on – please let me know where in the country you live. If you’d like us to invite you to our next round of Muscle Group meetings, please complete this online form.