Do you know what today is?

Get ready for company, World AIDS Day, for today also marks the start of the first ever Crohn's and Colitis Awareness Week! What a busy day for people with immune disorders! Go out and get yourselves some brown ribbon and make yourself a little pin for IBD education.You can even make it hold hands with your AIDS ribbon, as pictured above.

Here are some tips - snagged directly from the CCFA website - on what you can do to take part in the fectivities (that pun might be kind of a stretch but I'm sticking to it):

• Write to your House Representatives and encourage them to join the Crohn’s and Colitis Caucus,  http://capwiz.com/ccfa/home/

• “Like” the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ccfafb) and follow the Foundation on Twitter (www.twitter.com/ccfa)

• Change your Facebook status to: I’m supporting Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness week and you should too! To learn more, http://online.ccfa.org/AwarenessWeek

• Use the #CCFAawarenessweek on twitter

• Change your profile picture to our logo, download here. 

• Download our Awareness Week Poster

• Reach out to anyone you know with IBD and let them know you care

• Download the Crohn's and Colitis Awareness Week Press Release.

• Visit www.ccfa.org to learn more about the disease

I've admittedly got some personal reservations with the organization, but I still suggest expanding your awareness or sharing your expertise by reading through the forums at the CCFA site, as well as other sites like e-patients and We Are Crohn's and contribute what you can. Do you have advice or simply words of compassion to share with others? Why not start a blog of your own? Or give some readership to the wonderful folks I've got featured on my blog roll? Go on, get to it!

I'm not sure how I feel about this...

I'm on the CCFA mailing list, although I admittedly pay it (or any of the other mailing lists I'm on) much mind. However, I was glancing at the most recent blast, inviting people to share their stories to compete in the IBD Icon contest (a play on American Idol, I suppose). Here's an excerpt that raised my eyebrows:

                      

"IBD Icons are any of the 1.4 million Americans living with Crohn's or colitis who pursue their dreams without giving in to their disease."

So first off, as someone who loathes competition, I'm not keen on turning one's illness into a contest. But beyond that I really take issue with the phrase "without giving in to their disease." It's not like we get a say in the severity of illness we each experience and how it impacts our lives. The option of "give in or don't" usually isn't an actual option. Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful to encourage people to follow their dreams despite the obstacles of a chronic illness, but sometimes you can't NOT give into being debilitatingly sick. I don't feel it's right to put people in a position to feel worse about themselves because they're too ill to participate in something, or have not yet gotten to a point of remission where they can continue to pursue their dreams. What if a patient's dream at present is to simply get better? That's not a lesser dream, FYI.