Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Its NOT About the Tshirts

Ran into a friend today and told him about MedTees.com:

“Oh, you mean the t-shirt site?”

Well, yeah, but it’s really NOT about the t-shirts, you know.

“Huh?”

Well, the other night I had this guy e-mail me from out in the Internet ether – Bruce Rand – runs a forum for folks with inflammatory bowel disease…

“Eewwwww.”

Now really, turns out there’s TONS of folks out there with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease (two different forms of inflammatory bowel disease). Ulcerative colitis is just that, tons of little ulcers in the colon that can do all kinds of bad stuff (like cause discomfort, bleed, diarrhea) – the CURE is total colectomy, that is, removing the ENTIRE colon. Tough stuff, you know. And Crohn’s disease if a different form of inflammatory bowel disease that can strike anywhere from the mouth to the rectum and causes narrowings and scars within the GI tract, often needing surgeries to resect and repair these areas… Not at ALL easy to cope with EITHER of these illnesses… and yet he runs a forum for these folks and offered to give us an idea for a shirt… in fact a really cool idea to increase awareness about inflammatory bowel disease. Wants to donate some of the proceeds to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. Lot’s of great things going on and CERTAINLY a need for these folks to connect….

“What was it?”

A semi-colon. (See it here.)

You know what else was cool? A mom e-mailed me today to thank ME for putting up the shirts (we have three so far)... she has a 13 year old son with inflammatory bowel disease. And she suggested we put up a site for teens to connect that have tough illnesses.... so we did tonight.

The forum is dedicated to all teens with a difficult or challenging illness or disability who'd like to take the time to tell their story so that others might learn and gain support, and is NOT limited to just inflammatory bowel disease kids. View or add your posts to the forum here.


-- Wes

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, it's not anon, it's Liz from I Speak of Dreams. I came over from Dr. Helen. Welcome to the blogosphere.

I serve on the board of Alexandra Chiles Foundation, and I've learned from that service the challenges teens with serious illnesses face. I love the MedTees Idea, and will pass on the info to our board.

DrWes said...

Liz-

Thank you SO much for your welcome. I am humbled to have so many wonderful folks doing such good for so many. What a wonderful way to honor Alexandra's life. (Surprizingly I, too, have an Alexandra...).

I appreciate your referring the site to your board. If there's a way we could work together, let me know... there's not much tougher than having a child with cancer.

All the best-

--Wes