Welcome TO WOBBLERS ANONYMOUS
Hello and welcome. The aim of this web site is to offer support and information to individuals, and their family and friends who have, directly or indirectly, had their lives affected by the prescription drug Gentamicin. Members of the support groups come from all parts of the world.
My name is Richard and I first came acoss the web site wobblers.com in 1999 and joined the email support group then. The web site had been started by Lynn Brown of Alabama. Lynn was the first person to raise public awareness of the the dangerous side effects of the drug and she lent support to others following their treatment with Gentamicin. Her personal story and many others are to be found in the 'Our Stories' pages of this site.
Gentamicin is an aminoglycoside (antibiotic) that can have devastating side effects. It can cause deafness, severe kidney damage and completely destroy the vestibular system which is essential to an individuals sense of balance. Often there is a need to learn to walk again using other sensory and visual cues.
Normally the vestibular system allows the brain to cancel out head motion from the visual images around us. Without it a visual disturbance (oscillopsia) gives a sensation that something fixed is moving or wavering back and forth. This can cause a person to appear to be intoxicated when they walk so Lynn called these people Wobblers.
In 2011 when revisiting the site I found it had remained unaltered since, when searching for answers myself, I had first came across it twelve years previously. My motivation in redesigning the site was to make an up-to-date one stop shop for information. A number of people on the support group allowed me to chronicle their experiences and make them available to all.
Updated information and many new on-line resources had become available and time was spent researching and adding links. In my view the greatest continuing value of the updated web site is the sharing of information and the bringing together of people who had experienced the toxicity of Gentamicin.
If you are visiting the site for the first time looking for answers I hope you will also find comfort in knowing you are not alone. Please use the resources on the Links page to learn more. Read other peoples stories and join the support groups. By sharing the good and bad days we can feel better prepared to get on with our lives and if along the way we can also prevent this from happening to others then we have used our adversity for something positive.