EDS Awareness Month – 2016

Courtesy of Google Images

 

It’s Sunday the 1st of May 2016 and so kicks off Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) Awareness Month.

This year is pretty special in that there is a, now Sold Out, International EDS Symposium in New York, 3 – 6th May, where a host of working groups of some of the world’s leading Specialist Consultants, Doctors and many others, get together and will reclassify the diagnostic criteria for all Ehlers Danlos types.

I will let the amazing organisers, The Ehlers Danlos Society, tell you all about it, be sure to check out their website right ‘Here‘

” The Ehlers-Danlos Society is proud to announce an international symposium on Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in New York City, May 3–6, 2016, generously funded by EDS UK and the Ehlers-Danlos National Foundation. The symposium is being held in alliance with the EDS consortium in Ghent and medical professionals internationally.

The primary goal is to reclassify the diagnostic criteria for all the types of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. The symposium is also purposed with producing guidelines for medical professionals to use once a diagnosis has been reached as a universal guide for management.

We are excited to be working on a project that will change the lives of those with EDS. Updated diagnostic criteria, published in medical journals across the world, will increase and improve diagnosis, and the management guidelines will finally ensure that there is an internationally agreed-on treatment plan that doctors will be unable to ignore. Finally our community will have the foundations we need to ensure more research, funding and recognition.

Very generous private donations have allowed us to get the symposium underway. We are extremely grateful for the support, but more needs to be raised to make this most important event a complete success. Help us “Make our Invisible Visible” by donating to this project; anything you can give will be very much appreciated. To donate, please visit EDS UK or EDNF. “

This is very exciting stuff but I’d say it will take a long time for any of it to filter into the Irish Health System, but we have a few excellent EDS/HMS, Connective Tissue and Collagen disorder related groups here in Ireland who work tirelessly to spread more awareness and the most up to date information and research. Here are the ones I am most aware of, if there are any I have missed and I’m sure there are, please, really please let me know of any more Irish related Connective Tissue groups.

Please click on the names below to be taken to these pages. Also be aware that most of these links also have Facebook and Twitter pages as well as private, closed support groups for patients and relatives be sure to ask at the links below if you are interested in joining.

EDSAwarenessIreland 2016 EDS Awareness Month Logo 

EDS Awareness Ireland

Irish EDS & HMS

Marfan Support Group Ireland

Marfan Research Foundation Ireland

Irish EDS&HMS have a lovely page on their site giving an example of different connective tissue disorders that incorporate Hypermobility, as there are a few others besides EDS itself. Is certainly worth the quick read through. Find it , ‘Here‘

Only 2 weeks ago or less, Irish EDS&HMS also got the amazing opportunity to have a supporting clinician to sit on the International EDS Symposium in NY, they grabbed the opportunity, set up a fundraiser to send a medical professional from Ireland, worked incredibly hard, but unfortunately, though they got in touch with many people, they could not find someone on time to send over.

This just shows to prove how badly the medical support for EDS is here in Ireland. We have a few Consultants and Doctors with an interest, but no experts unfortunately. Hopefully this will change soon after the Symposium and EDS will be better recognised and supported here.

Thankfully though, there is another follow up conference in Baltimore in June where the findings of the NY Symposium will be formally discussed, any funds that have been collected already for the NY Symposium will be repurposed for the Baltimore conference where hopefully they can find someone in the medical community to support us with EDS.

If you would like to support the Irish EDS&HMS fund to send a medical professional to represent Irish EDSers in Baltimore then please, please donate ‘Here‘ or click on the image below.

Please click to support the Irish EDS & HMS Fund to send a medical professional to represent Ireland at the Baltimore EDS Conference.

This is so very important for the future of diagnosis and treatment of EDS here in Ireland. If a medical professional can go it means the information will be translated into the HSE quicker than if Irish EDS&HMS don’t get anyone and have to try and push the information into the HSE as patients or advocates themselves, they may not be taken as seriously or the information will not be treated as urgently as it would if us EDSers have the back up of a medical professional who already works within the HSE.

For the month that’s in it, here on Irish Dysautonomia Awareness, I will do my best to post regularly, share other people’s EDS blog posts share, photos, research and anything that will help spread more Awareness of EDS throughout May.

Thank you as always for taking the time to read and if YOU would like to share anything EDS related with us, a post, story, photo, drawing, meme, video, research, ANYTHING! Please get in touch either via our email: irishpotsies@gmail.com or on the blog here directly, through Facebook, Twitter or even our YouTube channel, and I will be sure to share it on here and through the social networks.

Cheers folks, Happy EDS Awareness Month 2016, let’s make it a good one if we can 🙂

Irish Dysautonomia Awareness EDS Logo Version!

Latest Fund Update – Jan 2016

Please click on this image to be taken to the fund page – Thank You

GoFundMe Update
Posted: 19th Jan 

Happy New Year everyone! I am sorry that I haven’t updated in a while but I was pretty unwell over the holidays then life, the universe and everything got in the way since!

I have updated the blog with the most up to date hospital admissions, appointments and NEW NEWS about finally getting an appointment for the Harold’s Cross inpatient rehabilitative treatment, That had been recommended as part of one of my next medical treatment steps, by Prof. Grahame while I was over in London!

Read the blog update on: www.irishdysautonomia.wordpress.com

Harold’s cross starts on the 8th Feb. I will initially be admitted for a week where I will undergo an intensive daily schedule of Physio, Hydro and occupational Therapies along with pain and medication management to help me live and cope easier at home with these medical conditions that I have as well as making me more mobile and hopefully gets me out of the wheelchair for good!
I can go home Sat. And Sun. for a rest before being brought back up for another week if it is deemed necessary to continue. This treatment may continue for a number of weeks or months.

Once Harold’s cross is done for a few weeks, I hope to be well and strong enough to travel back to The Hypermobility Unit in London again for further diagnostic tests and to meet with specialist consultants who specialise in EDS, of which, there are none, in Ireland.

This time it has been recommended to me by my doctors here that I go meet with a Nurogasteroenterologist named Prof. Aziz who will be able to treat me in relation to my Gastroparises , Gallbladder and Slow Gut Motility problems, as the surgeon here has tried everything he knows but is lacking knowledge in relation to EDS in order to help me further.

My Pain Specialist Here has suggested I may need an ‘Upright MRI’ also to confirm or deny possible neck and head instability problems , as well as, possible Chiari Malformation.

It is more than likely a long shot but with the severe pain, migraines, Seizures, pins and needles , weakness and many other symptoms I present with, it is considered possible enough for me to get it checked as soon as I am able.

Again I would like to stress that, without this fund and all your help, my medical treatment and diagnostic tests would never happen as there is no specialist consultant or medical centre available anywhere in Ireland for EDS. People like myself, our only option is to travel. And the cost of everything medical abroad is impossibly and prohibitively expensive.

I want to take this opportunity once again to thank everyone who has helped out in this fund so far by Donating money or Donating your time in organising Fundraising events. I can’t thank you enough from the bottom of my heart.

Let’s hope 2016 brings good health to all of us 🙂

THANK YOU!
Lette xxx

*Please click on the image at the top of this post to go to the fund page
**Alternatively, you may click HERE 🙂