emchy

Some of you know - and some of you don't - that my amazing and talented friend, comrade and poet Fran Varian has late stage lyme disease. In fact - many many americans have this disease at the late stage, which causes a whole host of evil and pain and for the most part (because it's so expensive to treat) the insurance companies try to bury the existence of the illness. There are bills in congress now to help rectify the situation - but as so much of what happens in the States happens via the court of public opinion - the fact that Oprah is considering doing a show on Lyme Disease - could be the knight in shining armor that these folks need.

So what do you do?
I got four suggestions, three of them free and all taking from 30 seconds to five minutes. Not bad to help save a life right?

First - repost this post in your journal, blog, facebook doohickey to spread the word (FREE, 30 seconds)
Second - you can watch a clip from this documentary to get a good sense of what the disease is and what we're talking about. (FREE, 3 1/2 mins)

Third: Send a Post to Oprah via HP and the film makers here http://www.oprah.com/community/thread/101903?start=0&tstart=0
(FREE, 2-5 mins)

Forwarded from Open Eye producer Kris Newby

Oprah is deciding whether to do a show on Lyme THIS WEEK, and we need to fill her comment board ASAP. According to the show producer, emails directly to Oprah will NOT be read; you need to post here:
http://tinyurl.com/bqo8vo

[If you have trouble with this link, go to http://www.oprah.com/community/thread/101903?start=0&tstart=0
or turn off your spy site blocking. If this link doesn't work, try copy and paste rather than click]

Having Oprah feature Lyme disease will help the new bill in Congress and it will pressure the new IDSA panel to do the right thing.

Can we please ask you to post (again) asking Dr. Oz and Oprah to do a show on UNDER OUR SKIN, the documentary that exposes the truth about Lyme disease?? (There are only 129 posts up there now.) Note that there is a 200 word limit. The important thing is that you post a few words about your personal story, not how long it is.

Here is how:
Here is the link where you can post a message - if you are already a member of Oprah's community.
http://tinyurl.com/bqo8vo

If you are not a member of the Oprah community, you will need to sign up first:
click on this link to sign up:
https://www.oprah.com/mbr/mbr_new_profile.jsp

Once you have filled out the appropriate info -- easy stuff, name, username, email address, birth year -- then you will get an email to your email address: You'll get an email from Oprah's web people sending you an activation link that you will need to click on in order to get started. Then you can click on the above link and post your comments.

I know this is a busy time for Lyme patient advocacy, but the Oprah show's national exposure could save thousands of lives and buoy up all of our individual efforts.

Thank you again for your help on this matter.

Fourth: Donate specifically to Fran's Health Care - http://www.helphealfran.org/