I won the Division Contest

I f*******g won the Toastmasters Division Contest!!!! I had a good day, and the audience laughed at all the jokes which was a bit shocking. My body language was very good. Take note: if your speech is not that stable, at least you need to have good body control and content! ;-) So all those disco nights and Karate katas had some use!

The Division Contest is organized twice a year and was the humorous speech contest. It chooses the best speaker of all Toastmaster clubs in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. There were eight competitors, the first two from each Area Contest. And each area has between 3 and 6 clubs, I believe, which each organize a club contest. In two weeks time, I will compete in Hamburg in the District Contest against 9 other division winners for the best speaker of continental Europe (18 countries with 152 active clubs). Wish me fluency! ;-)

Succeeding despite

You can succeed despite. A quick 3-minute guide!

Fluke or side effect?

A reader sent me his report on taking Pagoclone and Zyprexa, and discusses his experiences. We need to be aware of and discuss the potential downside of active substances.

I am a 34 year old PWS that started stuttering at the age of 12.  Go figure..  I was on the phase 2 Pagaclone trial a few years back and never gained any noticeable improvement with my speech.   I tried Zyprexa Zydis about 8 months ago.  I started at a daily 5 mg dose and after 2 week started to feel tired and withdrawn.  My fluency and blocking is worse when I am tired and that is what I felt like all day.  My doctor increased my daily dose to 7.5 mg and then eventually to 10 mg.  I felt even more withdrawn and even lethargic.  I noticed that my left eye lid started to involuntary tremor.  This never happened before.  I eventually stopped taking Zyprexa Zydis after 4 months.  I felt a boost of energy and my fluency was much better.  My eye tremor did not go away though.  It's actually worse now then when I was on Zyprexa.  It is not always visible but I can feel it and it is extremely annoying.  It tends to get worse under stress and expands to my other eye at times.  I am currently seeing a neurologist for my options.  I just wanted to let any PWS interested in trying Zyprexa know.  This does not necessarily mean that it will happen to you.  Just stating the facts.

What is going on here? There are two possible explanations. First, the tremor could be the result of taking Zyprexa, maybe a rare side effect. Or, second, he would have developed the eye tremor irrespectively of having taken Zyprexa. Maybe the tremor started due to another reasons: stress related? neurological issues? I thought about this, and it is impossible to give a definite statement, but only a statistical one.

There is a correlation between Zyprexa and eye tremors: Z related to ET. Everytime you have a correlation, there are four possible causes of this correlation: (A&B random, A causes B, B causes A, C causes A&B)

1) Z related to ET randomly. So by chance both happened around the same time. To confirm this random fluke, one needs to look at 100s of people and ask: Do the Zyprexa subjects have more eye tremors or not? If not, it is a random correlation.

2) Z causes ET. The compound Z causes ET presumably by modulating or modifying the neurology. This can be confirmed in random control trials if the Zyprexa group has eye tremors more often.

3) ET causes Z. I suspect that the eye tremor cannot cause the patient to take Zyprexa!! Rejected.

4) X causes ET and Z. A mysterious unknown force causes the patient to take Zyprexa AND have eye tremors. Here is a wild theory. The patient experiences the placebo effect while on Zyprexa and that also causes eye tremor in some. I am pretty sure that is not the case, but just to illustrate my point. Rejected.

So if you have eye tremor and assuming it is a proven side effect (which I do not think it is), do you know for sure it is due to Zyprexa? NO! It might STILL be a random fluke, a coincidence, or you are part of those who have this type of side effect. The only way to know with some certainty is to stop taking Zyprexa and see what is happening.

The world is complicated, isn't it? :-)