Category: Opinion

Reading matters. Let's hear it!

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.

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We're upright in all but body!

#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…

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Passionate Pragmatist: Carol Head and the Fight for ME/CFS Equality: The SMCI Pt. I

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

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The Cut

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.

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Epic Measures: How One Man Changed the World (and Possibly ME/CFS and FM As Well)

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.

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US: Read Lily Chu's CFSAC Testimony

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.

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