Fibromyalgia and facebook KNOWLEDGE in 2011 at Lumigrate.com So Far

I had a day yesterday that made me think a lot.  For starters, I worked all morning on statistics about health care trends and then met with the marketing/business development specialist who is helping me pull things together the way I want them to be but haven't mastered myself yet. She had a fascinating perspective on the Internet and alternative/complementary medicine, which I hope she'll get onto Lumigrate and write about at some point.  She's a generation after me and I believe we're a lot alike in some ways, just from very different places and families and 15 years apart in age, and those kinds of things fascinate me.  

We've been interested/following in the BoomUps concept that a business developer in Grand Junction has been blogging about. It's essentially about the differences of Baby Boomers and Generation X and Yers related to how they work. I'd also had a conversation recently with a dentist about the reasons I left insurance-based medicine; he's non insurance-based as well, and we talked about how 'the system' has gotten so bad that those of us with licenses put ourselves at risk for lawsuit and losing our licenses by these hospitals, rehab facilities, and skilled nursing facilities, outpatient clinics, etc.  But before I 'left' I had to say 'but who is going to be there for ME and my friends when we're aging and needing fixing up by qualified people?' and I had to wrap my head around the BEST THING I COULD DO FOR THE FUTURE OF MY COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE WAS WHAT YOU NOW SEE AS LUMIGRATE today.  

I haven't seen anything in the BoomUps blogs yet about us Boomers going to work for Greatest Generation -- essentially my first employer was a retired USAF Major turned International Sales Forecaster; I wish I had more of my father's abilities sometimes -- like yesterday looking at statistics and trends and forecasting in my mind what Lumigrate's to do best.  But then I wouldn't have room for all the things I have within me from my mother, who was really intuitive and a 'people person', also an animal person in a way.  Certainly a teacher -- and it turns out our school occupational therapist in a day there weren't such things in our school; she'd taken training early on after 'sensory integration' was essentially 'discovered and written up' by Jean Ayres, OTR.  

Mom screened EVERY student who went through the school after that, and the ones who had neurological system dysfunction the worst were put into her fourth grade class where every day they would do the exercises and activities that could help reorganize the neurological system.  Back then, the belief was that our neurological system was done settling in at about age 10-12 and so she was pretty intent on getting on those 10 year olds' bodies/minds to 'therapize them' (my term). She passed on about 25 years ago but I still have people when I'm 'back home' sometimes what an impact she had on them.  I look enough like her that people used to approach me based on that alone, and it was a small, rural Colorado community so at community gatherings related to the old days (reunions) people kind of figure it out though my last name's changed.  The apple didn't fall far from the trees in my case, fortunately AND unfortunately.  

I'd also this week been thinking about another person in our community who is 16 years younger than I am who is struggling with mental and medical issues (are they one and the same or separate?  You cannot separate the two, so I refer to it as BMS (body, mind, spirit).  It's kind of beyond me as it's just stuff I've not encountered with the populations I've had in my career as an OT since 1995/6 so I've been brain-picking people for a while on this one, one of the advantages of being a provider on Lumigrate.com is we can ask each other for curbside consults!   So I was spending time with a retired teacher friend who's now into educating teachers to become masterful about this type of situation and her response was 'if a person has a teacher at the time they start having struggles in school who can see what they have within them that's special and bring that to the child to see it -- this person likely just didn't have that.'  It renewed my appreciation for all the teachers in my family in the past and I recalled that Oprah's last show included a thanks to her fourth grade teacher, who was in the audience that day.  Oprah looks at herself as a teacher now, and I believe that is accurate, and I hope in the long future ahead of Lumigrate it serves to help as many as Oprah has, just differently.  

We'll see -- when I look at the statistics I believe it can! But I'm reaching out to others with different abilities and ages / experiences at this time, and working to create something that's going to address aging issues, other chronic illness issues but through the perspective of a wellness model instead of an illness model.  Rather than "how to get out of chronic illness", I want Lumigrate to be "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" as our slogan says.  I believe the younger generation has that more than my generation -- it's like we know the concept but we haven't incorporated it into the fabric of our being.  At least that's how I feel at some levels.  It's hard to reprogram the upbringing I had from The Greatest Generation (my parents were born in the early 1920s so were Depression Era survivors as World War II, which greatly affected people related to resources.)  

Yesterday I thought of the way I wanted to drop hand written corrections into a fax machine and today that's not the way things are done!  That's okay, it got us together to meet personally and have lunch at the wonderful 626 on Rood, who was one of the FIRST stops of the Peace Fleece way back in January when I had another business lunch there. This time it was two seasons later and it was patio weather -- they have an outstanding patio for afternoon/evening as it's in the shade of the building.  It's almost like being in another country AND they have a garden right on site for some of their herbs and tomatoes.  Gotta LOVE that!  

I let the owner know that we'll have the fibromyalgia information completed soon and to all the people who were kind enough to pose in this year's 'campaign photos'.  Naturally the Peace Fleece and I are on the campaign trail all the time related to FMS Awareness, but the focus from January 1 through Awareness Day on May 12th/FMS Awareness Day and beyond a ways to wrap things up, is fibromyalgia.  

The reason I've not yet announced the FMS KNOWLEDGE contest winners yet is I want to do it at a time I have things off my plate which are taking my time so I can really interact.  Plus Yenta, Robin Thomas and ITC have been distracted with other things too -- the start of summer can be a very busy time for people who have families with people graduating, getting married, getting out of school for the summer/vacations and GOLF (that would be Gary from ITC).  ALSO we have a NEW podcast series on the topic of facebook!  It had about 100 people a day accessing it the first days it was up through Lumigrate along! (you can access it directly on iTunes for those who don't know about Lumigrate YET and are searching on topics by searching for podcasts on iTunes).  If you don't have electronic gadgets (I don't still), you can do as I do and listen on the computer -- I listened to the podcasts in the course of a day while in the kitchen.  

www.lumigrate.com/forum/facebook-and-social-media-fun-marketing-locally-worldwide