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September is Pain Awareness Month!
Sat, 09/11/2010 - 1:49pm
Hello Everyone!
I hope September is going well for everyone. Back to school and sports, the weather changing, starting to prepare for the holidays are all big stressors for us, and I know for me, tend to set off flares! I'm learning how to pace, but keep finding myself involved in more and more activities related to fibro awareness, which is such a great honor for me.
This month is Pain Awareness Month. It's a month long opportunity to explore all the various pain conditions out there and to help other's learn about fibromyalgia. The American Pain Foundation is central in raising awareness and setting up educational opportunities this month. Here in my corner of Ohio, Dee Browers (the local American Pain Foundation advocate) has arranged an educational lecture from one of the area's best pain management specialists, Dr. Amol Soin. I'm so looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
The biggest push for this month is the Virtual March on Washington to raise awareness. Recognizing that many of us can't go out and have a regular walk or race, the Pain Foundation has set up many things you can do from your computer to help raise awareness about pain. Great information is located all over the Pain Foundation website as well as easy ways to send letters to your local legislators, share your story and sending the link out to your friends and family to help them learn more about the realities of pain and what we deal with daily.
The American Pain Foundation has given us all the opportunity to advocate for ourselves this month, and every month with all they offer! Sign the virtual wall on the website, do some reading and pass it on. Advocate in your own home, family and community!
http://www.painfoundation.org/
__________________
~~Aimee
Aimee Shannon is a licensed social worker who has fibromyalgia along with a collection of other illnesses. Aimee is passionate that those dealing with chronic illnesses need education and support to best manage their illnesses. Along with contributions of writing for Lumigrate in 2009-11, Aimee can be found leading a support group on Facebook, as well as in-person support groups in the Dayton, Ohio region. Please connect if you wish, at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fibromyalgia-Support-Groups-by-Aimee/94975642116
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e-mailThis forum is provided to allow members of Lumigrate to share information and ideas. Any recommendations made by forum members regarding medical treatments, medications, or procedures are not endorsed by Lumigrate or practitioners who serve as Lumigrate's medical experts.
Thank you, Aimee, for covering this. As you and maybe a few other long-timers at Lumigrate know, I basically had my eyes on your advocacy work on Facebook from the day I first knew of you and then reached out and literally tackled you earlier this year when I saw the interview you did on your local Ohio television about fibromyalgia. In the spring, when I wanted to provide information on Lumigrate for the International FMS/CFS/ME Awareness Day in May, I created a new Forum here for Awareness, and Titled it Awareness 2010, but was going to be transitioning that to be just 'Awareness Outreach and Public Relations'.
Now that I'm back from my time off with my father's passing and funeral last week, I'll take a little time now to change the title of that Forum so that it's 'the way it is going to be for a long while'. For those who take the time to follow along in the link I'm providing here, you'll see that Aimee had placed letters she had written for the purpose of outreach to the press and to clinics.
I was ever so PLEASED, as I know that I had a 'good idea and was on track with Lumigrate' when the very big, very professional mortuary business provided us with a box at the end of our meeting which has a CD and paper copies of letters that you need to send out after someone's death.... As I know we've discussed, Aimee, and others are aware if they've been reading the forums regularly, I don't intend to duplicate something on Lumigrate which is being done somewhere else already or better than we can do it given time; I want to then collaborate with that organization and then support and guide Lumigrate's users to those resources. In effect we are morphing into a portal that, with our solid reputation for having high standards for validity in the burgeoning field of progressive health information, we can streamline people's journey for information and make it FUN overall here at Lumigrate.
So thank you, Aimee for putting a link to this quality organization and I'll be putting it on my very long 'to-do list' this week to more closely review what their content is and who is sponsoring them, and possibly contact them abotu sponsorship of Lumigrate. At minimum, I want them to know we are supporting them in this way. As many know, organizations whose content appears to be limited (aka 'censored') to be in favor of pharmaceutical interventions at the expense of information which we at Lumigrate support, such as nutrition or compounding/biologically identical hormones (including supplemental products for nutrition or hormones) are not going to get an endorsement from me. That's not to say the pharmaceutical industry is to be disdained, it is just saying that they shouldn't be in a position to be filtering the information people obtain. There are new laws since 2009 which limited their access to patients in doctors offices and they shifted their outreach monies to organizations such as National Fibromyalgia Association from what I have been able to discern.
I look forward to continuing to build the network on Lumigrate of quality readers/followers and leaders/providers, organizations, businesses -- if you look at our logo of the weaving of purple and green (representing "integrate"), think of Lumigrate as the light in the center of that mesh.
And this week more than any week, I thank you Aimee, and the other 'hands that make for light work for everyone writing for Lumigrate' for posting this so that it was here on Lumigrate and all I have to do is my promotional end of it at this time. Again, this year was one I'd 'budgeted' for time and other resources, as being one for laying down the foundation of Lumigrate's providers and contributors of information and make or strengthen the relationship with potential financial sponsors who see and appreciate the work we are doing. Once we have that foundation under us, in this case for how we 'do awareness', then next year we can devote our time, energy, money to getting more quality people aware of it, as we did the hardest work this year with the base/foundational content.
Very proud to have you as a writer here, Aimee, and I commend you for all the successes you are having with YOUR work with the fibromyalgia and fatigue cause ~~ Mardy
Link for Lumigrate's Outreach Forum for Fibro/Fatigue:
www.lumigrate.com/forums/health-issuesdis-eases/fibromyalgia-chronic-pain-and-chronic-fatigueexhaustion/awareness-outr
Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! is my motto. I'm Mardy Ross, and I founded Lumigrate in 2008 after a career as an occupational therapist with a background in health education and environmental research program administration. Today I function as the desk clerk for short questions people have, as well as 'concierge' services offered for those who want a thorough exploration of their health history and direction to resources likely to progress their health according to their goals. Contact Us comes to me, so please do if you have questions or comments. Lumigrate is "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" for increasing numbers of people. Follow us on social networking sites such as: Twitter: http://twitter.com/lumigrate and Facebook. (There is my personal page and several Lumigrate pages. For those interested in "groovy" local education and networking for those uniquely talented LumiGRATE experts located in my own back yard, "LumiGRATE Groove of the Grand Valley" is a Facebook page to join. (Many who have joined are beyond our area but like to see the Groovy information! We not only have FUN, we are learning about other providers we can be referring patients to and 'wearing a groove' to each other's doors -- or websites/home offices!) By covering some of the things we do, including case examples, it reinforces the concepts at Lumigrate.com as well as making YOU feel that you're part of a community. Which you ARE at Lumigrate!