December/January 2021/2022 (vol. 18/4)

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Parkinson’s, work and me

One man’s experience of Parkinson’s

Summary:

On 21 June 2011, Ian Askew was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and was eventually persuaded to take redundancy. Here, he explains that disclosing the condition to his employer was among the many difficult challenges he faced – and the response was not supportive.

On a training course in Paris in 2009, a German financial expert was performing the role of giving me feedback on the various exercises we had to perform. ‘For such an experienced and knowledgeable senior executive’, he asked, ‘why do you have a nervous tremor in your voice when you address the group audience?’

I had become very conscious of this tremor, which was, in turn, making the tremor worse. When you have to persuade people to change, the last thing you want is to appear nervous; it’s as if you are not entirely confident with the reason for change and the solutions you are implementing…

 

Ian Askew is a former senior executive of an international logistics company. His wife Gillian Askew is an occupational health nurse

Author: Askew I

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Occupational Health at Work December/January 2021/2022 (vol. 18/4) pp15-16

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