Bringing awareness to a rare disease is no easy feat. Generally speaking, most people do not go out of their way to find a rare disease and although there are over 7000 rare diseases out there it usually takes yourself, a family member, or a friend to contract one before you even know it existed in the first place.
Some of you may know my wife, Terri Caissie, and some of you may know she has Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy (Autoimmune) with Progressive Cerebellar Ataxia … but how many of you know what that is?
Terri and myself had tried to get the details of this disease in front of more people to consider and learn about but until very recently we were not having much success. This changed … and for that I am writing this post to say thanks to the people that are affecting this change.
First off, we’d like to thank Tom McFarlin for his post. This caught the attention of others in the WordPress community and sparked a post by Jeff Chandler at WP Tavern; thank you very much, too!
Look what happens with a post on WP Tavern:
What does that mean to awareness for HE? Considering WordPress powers 25% of the Internet … THAT. IS. HUGE!! Thank you!
Thank you again for the people sharing these links; and, thank you for those that have donated monies to help Terri. We are very grateful for your support.
Our hopes of bringing awareness to those with Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy (or any other rare disease) are buoyed up beyond anything we could have imagined when Terri started her YouCaring campaign.
Thank you, again, to the WordPress community … without you this would not be happening.
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I believe we’re going to raise the funds for you and Terri. I’m so proud of all the people who have come together to help, and I’m so glad you guys decided to be open about this.
@Tom – Thanks, again … we are very grateful for everyone that has made an effort to help. Whether it be with a donation, a tweet or retweet, sharing, or however they were comfortable supporting this. Every action helps to bring more awareness to rare diseases like Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy (HE). Awareness is the real goal, no matter the results of the fund raising, and this is something everyone has really helped with.