Living with Essential Tremor

Here are a few trials and tribulations of living with ET. These are real people dealing with a real problem. Don't forget March is Essential Tremor Month!

Using a knife to cut vegetables. Most of the time I end up cutting myself.

Burning myself when I take dishes out of the oven.

Signing my name at a register in a store.

Dialing a cell phone.

Cutting a piece of cake or pie from a dish. 
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Weightlifting or doing something that needs to apply force, more than a problem it's kind of embarrassing

Using tools, such as screwdrivers and drills. Gardening tools, using Shovels, and rakes and lawn clippers. 
 
Zipping Zippers, using a match. 

Using a pair of scissors or clippers is a hard one for me, at work I have trouble plugging tight power plugs 
together, using screwdrivers, and one not related to work, getting money out of my wallet, I find it hard to riffle through the coins I need collect them together and hand them over without dropping them, and then the same when I try to put the change back in my wallet.

I think the assumption that he is an alcoholic or addict of some kind. This had a negative impact on my father's 
life. I think overall, women are more likely to be thought of as nervous or cold.

Putting my son's toys together. Carrying a cup of coffee.

The calligraphy is another problem, mine is awful for men it would be more of an ego thing 

I have heck at the ATM machine. It 
usually takes me several tries and sometimes I have to go in the bank or credit 
union and just draw from my account. 

Texting is a prolonged task. Doctor advised me that I should not ever take a field sobriety test, use the 
breathalyzer or blood test. And I don't drink and drive.

Any "small" task is hard for me - buttons, screw drivers are next to impossible, scissors, shaving, picking up small objects. 

Putting on make-up. 

How 'bout urinating at a stadium or ball park men's room,the ones with troughs. Shaking when you are done is okay, but while you're peeing recently had trouble with the gas cap, got really frustrated because I nearly had to ask someone else to get it off for me. Felt really wimpy and less than manly.

Contact lenses in is a challenge

Confrontation gets my hands and legs shaking really bad. The more a situation escalates or the more that I get 
pushed into a corner, thE worse my shaking gets. Because of that, I have tried to avoid "fight or flight" scenarios for my entire life. I'm certainly not a coward but my neurological system just goes into hyper overdrive on me leaving me as a shaking mess.

Basically anything that causes stress in any given moment/time makes ET worse. It is amazing how many things are stressful in a person’s life.

I don’t do confrontation because it seriously effects my shaking it even if it isn’t involving me I don’t like being around it i can sense trouble brewing a mile off.

Generally, I can cope with anything else but when it comes to signing my name is lose all confidence.

Signing your name can be awful. I sometimes have to sign for things at work, and its embarrassing to have the delivery person stare at my shaking hands, then ask me what my name is so they can print it.

My signature when I write it resembles an un-rolled Slinky. I gave up trying to make it legible years ago......

I told my surgeon I mastered his signature. No one can read either one.

Just the other day in my Textual Editing class when I had to "sign" in, I just put down a very shaky "X" down 
instead of trying to sign my name illegibly (and more often than not misspelled). have trouble with shaving and holding any drinks. My biggest one is I work at a big retail store and when a customer comes up with CD/DVD's we are told to open them up and take out the disk. I have tried but I kept dropping them, so now I tell the customers that I am sorry I don't take them because of my shaking hands. So far they are happy with that.

There's so many more trial that we with Essential Tremor live with.