We've been doing the walk for a long time. You can read about Mary Anne's progress, and why the advances that this walk funds are important to us in these earlier posts:
It's been a good year for Mary Anne since last year's walk. She went to England again for needlework, and the Royal School of needlework did their only US workshop in downtown Lexington last year. You can see some results below.
We continue to have lots of company out on the creek; life is very good.
The MS Society continues to make progress against this disease. I'm including some material you can read if you want more perspective on living with a chronic disease.
NYTimes: Five Things I Wish I’d Known Before My Chronic Illness
What do I mean when I say "She is counting her Spoons"
I wish more people understood...
What she has is not a cold or the flu. She will never get better. A nap won't help. She is not lazy but she is tired to the point of a lethargic state. She's on meds to try to make it easier to thrive and merely survive. Many people say that she's faking it or that she just needs to push through it. Well sometimes she can push through the pain and live her life, but there are days where she can't walk without having to hold on to something. Her joints hurt. Her body hurts. Her mood varies, and she is sad a lot. She tries to control her mood swings and intermittent bouts of depression. She takes her meds daily, and more vitamins than you could fathom, to help keep her up but most days nothing works.
What she has is not a cold or the flu. She will never get better. A nap won't help. She is not lazy but she is tired to the point of a lethargic state. She's on meds to try to make it easier to thrive and merely survive. Many people say that she's faking it or that she just needs to push through it. Well sometimes she can push through the pain and live her life, but there are days where she can't walk without having to hold on to something. Her joints hurt. Her body hurts. Her mood varies, and she is sad a lot. She tries to control her mood swings and intermittent bouts of depression. She takes her meds daily, and more vitamins than you could fathom, to help keep her up but most days nothing works.
She has an autoimmune disease.
This is to honor anyone who is fighting MS, Chronic Lyme Disease, Dermatomyositis, Lupus, Graves Disease, Scleroderma, Ulcerative Colitis, Fibromyalgia, Sjogren's syndrome, Crohn's, Sarcoidosis, Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Celiac, Hashimotos Thyroiditis, PBC, CIDP, Aplastic Anemia, Psoriasis, Psoriatic Arthritis, Takayasu's Arthritis or any other autoimmune disease...
There are a lot of diseases we need to conquer. Please donate. Let's all do what we can.
