I’ve been conspicuously absent well, pretty much since PJ Day, but there are a couple of valid reasons for this absence.
1. The picture on the last post is so crazy powerful that I didn’t want to mess that up with another post. What a day February 29th was. It will never leave my memory and I am so thrilled to have been a part of it.
2. I’m weaning off my prednisone and am at that point right now where I am feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck – from first thing in the morning to the last thing before bed. It’s thrown a bit of a kink into my plans and has thrown me for a loop both physically and psychologically. But I wont whine about that here, that’s for another blog (www.weggiesunite.blogspot.com) as here is where we gather to change the world, not to whine about the meds, or the diseases. 
I’ve been thinking about the next steps. We have a whole year (well, 11 months) until the next PJ Day, but in the meantime stuff has to happen to move this forward and make positive changes. I have a few ideas in mind that are still gelling and working themselves out on their own (similar to what happened before the PJ Day) and I will put a few out right now. How they will materialize will come to me later but it seems that once it’s out in the ether it becomes reality.
1. Create a Non Profit Organization for Canada that will propel this cause forward. Working on it.
2. See if there is a possibility for implementing a screen to help doctors and patients get to the root of an autoimmune problem / diagnosis faster and avoid making the patient feel like a hypochondriac and following a protocol that is available to all doctors, not just rheumatologist. In other words create a series of blood screen protocols that would work gradually from the most common to the least common autoimmune diseases that any doctor could go through to eliminate and pinpoint the nature of a problem – rather than guessing their way through finding a disease that could be so rare that it’s completely off the radar screen.
3. One thing that is happening with the medical system due to its overburdened nature and lack of doctors is that a trend is creeping in where doctor’s offices are going as far as having signs in their offices that say ‘One symptom per visit’ – this is true and for someone trying to get a diagnosis for a systemic disease it’s an impossible situation. My thought was that we all have to wait at the doctor’s office. What if there’s a questionnaire that you fill in before you go in that alerts the doctor to what’s really going on in your body thus empowering them to make a quicker and more effective diagnosis. Most people get flustered and end up forgetting to let the doctor know some important information at their visits, so this would kill several birds with one stone.
I have a very wonderful friend who’s been on the team that implemented a leading edge advancement in our provincial medical system, that has been a godsend for me personally and after reading the hair-raising experiences of other Weggies and trying to get their info from doctor to doctor, I feel very lucky to be living in Alberta because of this particular advancement – Netcare. She doesn’t know I want to pick her brain yet, but I’ll do it and see what she thinks about my ideas and how to go about getting the ball rolling.
So there, the wonderful picture from PJ Day is getting buried down the page now, but that’s the price of moving forward. Thank you to all my wonderful friends for the continued support and I keep repeating myself, but I truly think we can make huge changes for the better, not only around our homes but around the world.
