The Myall River Tea Gardens Support Group for persons with Parkinsons disease (PD), and their carers, held their first bimonthly meeting at the Tea Gardens Manor on 1 June.

The management of the Manor have made a room available for the Group to hold future meetings.

This enables residents in the Manor to come to the meetings.

The coordinators, Garry Boyd and Narelle Hawkes thanked the manager for their kind offer of the venue and morning tea.

The next Parkinsons Disease Support Group meeting will be held on Monday 3 August, again at the Manor.

There will be a guest speaker, Mr Jonathon Allott of TabTimer, who has designed a pill container and other electronic devices designed to remind people living with Parkinsons (or other diseases) when medication is due.

Jonathon searched high and low for a pill box with a timer and alarm to assist his parents.

After visiting countless pharmacies and searching online, Jonathon couldn’t find such a device in the local market.

He eventually found that he had to buy a medication reminder device from the USA, paying for exchange rates, delivery charges and time delays.

The medication device worked well for his parents – they were relieved of the task of remembering to take medicines, because the medication reminder did the remembering.

All was going well until one day the medication reminder was lost.

Jonathon once again searched high and low for a replacement and, as he was still unable to find a timer in Australia, once again he had to purchase the item from the USA.

Myall Coast News spoke to Mr Allott and he said, “TabTimer now has over 100 different products and helps people with many different chronic illnesses, diseases, disabilities, hearing and vision impairment.”

“Their products help people improve their quality of life and help them maintain their own independence as long as possible, especially people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimers, dementia, diabetes, epilepsy, heart disease and many other chronic illnesses,” he said.

Anyone with PD, or who is a carer, is welcome to attend the meeting which will start at 10 am.