What's your Lyme mission statement?

[Guest guest]

Here's my personal Lyme mission statement:

I want to change

the way the world perceives Lyme disease.

The

biggest problems Lyme patients face aren't the physical ailments

themselves, though those are major. Instead, it's " vision problems " --in

the medical arena, the insurance system, the media and society at

large. For complex reasons succinctly described in the book Cure Unknown and the

film Under Our Skin,

people suffering from Lyme disease are basically kicked to the curb by

the medical/industrial complex and left there to make it--or not--on

their own.

It's akin to the early days of

the AIDS epidemic, where very sick people found they had to fight their

illness on two completely different fronts--the personal and the

political. That's where Lyme disease is now. Anyone who has Lyme

themselves or is closely connected to someone who has it, finds

themselves thrust into a highly charged political atmosphere. Most of

us didn't choose activism. Activism chose us.

On

October 22, the day before the LDA/ILADS conferences in Washington DC,

CALDA is sponsoring a day-long workshop called the Lyme Action Program.

Even if you're not coming to the LDA/ILADS conferences, if there's any

way you can swing it, I hope you'll join us.

It's

a chance to hear from leaders in the Lyme movement: those who

spearheaded the sequence of actions which resulted in last summer's

historic IDSA Lyme hearing, those shepherding Lyme legislation through

Congress, those focusing on the special needs of children with Lyme

disease.

It's a chance to meet with

activists from all over the country (some experienced hands, some brand

new to the game), exchange ideas, and forge a renewed sense of shared

purpose.

Click here for registration information for the Lyme Action Program:

http://www.lymedisease.org/activism/lyme_events.html

And whether you join us or not, I

invite you to contemplate these questions: what's your Lyme mission

statement? And what are you going to do about it?

Dorothy Leland

www.touchedbylyme.org