This past spring I attended a screening for Unrest at the Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto. Something powerfully transformative happened during the screening. Something that can’t be articulated in a review.
The #TimeForUnrest campaign has officially kicked off, and these are some of my reasons for for why it’s #TimeForUnrest.
1. People are dying.
The demise of my ability to read extensively is one of my greatest losses. I try, but pages petrify. A few paragraphs must do me now; some days a couple of lines. It’s an issue many #pwme wrestle with, and contributes to our sense of separation.
When a sudden and unexpected illness catapulted my life into a completely different path, life as I had come to know it, was irrevocably changed.
#BedFest was quite the occasion. People appeared in PJ’s, crumpled t-shirts, crochet vests, keen to address the wider world; people whose voices are seldom heard, called together by #MEAction and its volunteers to share music, art, photography and multifarious creativity and raise ME-Awareness. We didn’t have to leave the house…
One of my deeply held personal values is that ALL people must be treated respectfully…I have found that respectful, highly knowledgeable, forceful advocacy language that expresses the desperate needs of our community is the most effective. But please do not mistake my professional, respectful demeanor as anything less than a cover for my righteous indignation and outrage at the inhumanity of our community’s treatment” Carol Head
Are you prepared for an 18% reduction in ME spending?
I’m not. For one thing, the first year of funding for the new Collaborative Research Centers is set aside in this year’s budget. But all bets are off going forward. Like many other RFAs, the one for ME Centers explicitly states, “Future year amounts will depend on annual appropriations.” So it is possible that future years of funding could be cut or eliminated.
Could ME/CFS be the post SIRS ‘immune paralysis’ state of CARS (Compensatory Anti-Inflammatory Response Syndrome)? Or MARS (mixed antagonists response syndrome)?
Chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) have a long, long way to go before they get the attention and resources they deserve. It would take a heroic leap to quickly achieve what people with these diseases deserve and what the diseases themselves – given their economic costs / burdens they impose – should receive. So much needs to be done (funding, doctor education, drugs, other treatments) – and we’re coming from such a low place – that it seems almost impossible that it can be done in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, people do the impossible – make what seems at first to be inconceivable differences in one area or another – all the time. This blog is about a man who did that, and did so in a way that may directly help those with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia.
Thank you for this opportunity to address the CFS Advisory Committee. I am writing to in response to the call for comments regarding how the US government might engage members of the ME/CFS community, especially patients and their lay supporters, in addressing and solving the clinical, research, educational, and public health challenges of this condition.
