Its been a rough go lately dealing with extra pain but somehow I manage to keep moving forward! A few weeks ago I traveled down to Huntington Beach to attend the Global Genes Rare Disease Summit. The stress of the travel was hard on my body and although I had to fight a lot of extra pain it was well worth it. There’s a trade off that comes with living a chronic life and I know there are others of you out there that understand what I’m talking about. Its all a part of me moving forward with my life and not allowing your illness to take all control!

I arrived home from the Summit changed but in a really good way. When your sitting beside a person who is one of only five people in the U.S. that has a rare form of cancer things are suddenly put into perspective. There was unique story after unique story each one impacting me in a different way. It was impossible to take away just one thing! If I felt inspired to do something about CRPS before, I left feeling as if I had to do all that much more! When I looked at the work that some people had been doing to raise awareness for their particular illnesses, I had to ask myself what am I really doing? At the end of the weekend we all went back home having gained 500 friends and a wealth of knowledge to take back to our communities.

I really feel I was able to make some strong connections and tap into some resources that will be useful here in my own community and province. Although its hard at the best of times to battle on with chronic illness I believe God gives us an abundance of strength when we need it the most, never giving us more than we can handle. With that being said as I left the conference knowing that I needed to be stronger in my advocacy efforts I came to the conclusion that no matter what I face or take on, God will provide in every way I need Him to along the way. I don’t want to be that person who says “I can’t” just because the path in front of me looks too difficult. I need to remember that God is guiding this walk and that when I’m lacking clarity or vision that I’m to look towards Him.

As I prepare to have the first ever CRPS Awareness day here for the Province of Saskatchewan I can feel my legs begin to tremble just at the thought of having to put this one day event on. Some of the people coming to this event hold important positions within our community and even our province. So sometimes I question my qualifications or I tell myself I’m way out of my league when it comes to taking this on. However nothing could be further from the truth. My qualifications speak for themselves having lived this illness for the past ten years! I need push forward because I have a testimony within my story that might just help one person find the care they need, or cause one Dr. to stop and think about how they diagnose and treat a patient. It might even be that one person from our government who comes to the event and is impacted. Leading them to say that we need to work on policy and legislation. Let me be very clear! All I’m saying is that by standing still I won’t create change!

Fast forward two weeks because this post was suppose to be up already but there’s just been too much going on and not enough time to do everything! CRPS Awareness Day went ahead this week and was a huge success! I’m not going to lie when I say I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to fill seats for my key note speaker but we were at full capacity and I think a few people other than patients walked away better informed of what CRPS is. The next day I was asked to speak at another conference and share my story with a group from within our health district. As much as I was nervous about getting up and doing it I knew I had to because we need to spread the word and make people listen.

Its not about being qualified! Stories bring with them power to change, whether it be my story or your story or someone else’s! It’s only when we move that we make a difference but you have to ask yourself are you willing to do it? Through sharing my story and all that has been thrown at me over the last ten years it is my hope that I will make a difference. All I can do is hope and leave the rest up to God!