Monday, May 31, 2010

PatientsLikeMe.com

Yeah seriously, it's a website I kept noticing on my Facebook home page. I decided to click on it and play along. It's a little like E-Harmony, but for people with various medical conditions. Symptom matchmaking. Interesting...

Creating the profile was one part kinda fun, two parts kinda strange. There are 1302 pages with 15 patients per page. 19,530 hole-filled people on 1 website. I found that I'm not the only one sans medication. 764 patients use "prayer" as their first line of defense. 45 are on the gluten free diet. It's nice to know I'm not alone. My other treatment is high levels of vitamin D. I receive this treatment on my back deck, radio on max volume, smoothie in hand. It's really the only way to do it:-)

The site assigns you a little man, which is supposed to symbolize...you. He looks a little like an Oscar Award statue. I don't know whom to thank, however. Sure, I've got my ideas as to how I got MS. Remember the little red chewable tablets from elementary school? They highlighted the plaque on your teeth so everyone could see you didn't brush properly? If it wasn't those, it was the fact that I drank from a garden hose on a daily basis in spring and summer, and played outside for hours. I'm digressing. There are a series of little blocks for the little man that are color coded. You want as many green ones as you can string together, because that means you're smooth sailing. I plugged in my info and came up with 3 green blocks and 3 light yellow. Light yellow essentially means it's a noticeable symptom, but not worth a dark yellow block. I then went through pages and pages of patients who have experienced MS as long as I have. There are hardly any green blocks. There are mostly light and dark yellows, and a few reds. Did it get me thinking? You betcha.

Sometimes that lady from Univ of Delaware is right, circa 2007, when she told me I deny the disease. I don't always face the facts, I don't often consider the what ifs, and I don't usually give a lot of thought into what symptoms I'm experiencing and properly weight them on a scale of 1-10. It's not that I'm denying the disease, I often just don't have time to spend worrying about it. And when I do have that rare time...and believe me, I do...I have to cite Bible verses to remind myself that it's all in God's hands.

I just received a comment on my profile. A nice gal welcoming me to the group. I'm not sure I'll do well with this sort of forum, but it will be interesting to peek at every now and again. I'm more the blogging type:-)

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