I am So Honored.....

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This week I received the thrill of my life.  http://wellsphere.com notified me that I had been chosen to have my blog displayed at the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco next week.  This is one of the largest health venue in the United States this year.  It seems they will have two large screens and be displaying blogs on them both days.  One screen is in the main venue and the other in the lounge.  As if this was not enough to send me into orbit., they also let me know I will be entered in the 2010 Top Health Blogger of the Year at the Conference. My blog will receive a badge so followers of my blog can vote for me as they wish. This is just totally unreal once you realize that I never wrote a thing before October 2007 when I ventured into http://PatientsLikeMe.com, while looking for my email on yahoo.
One night in 2008 I could not sleep and decided to check out http://blogspot.com and before I knew it, the clock struck 7:oo am and I had given birth to a blog.  I hurried back to Patienslikeme and announced my invention only to find out I had actually invented two blogs neither of which anyone could view.  The site worked with me and got one canceled and the url straight on the one I saved, and I was off.  Most people would have stopped there but not me.....Now I write three blogs and truely love it.

One of my favorite and oldest blog posts was called:

HERE'S TO MY PLM FRIEND

In approximately 60 some odd hours the sum essence of an entire life has come full circle.  I once told my very dearest friend on PLM that I was more comfortable as Pokie than I ever was as Charlene.  When I came to this friend, I was losing another dear friend to cancer and it seemed that absolutely nothing was going my way.  The more I poured my heart out the more likely it was that those were the things and people who left me stranded in pain here on earth.  The night I found this friend was like so many at that point in my life....empty, self-pitying, pain raging through out my body and my life was shrouded in dispare.  The odd part was, no one seemed to notice are maybe just did not care to notice the desperate shape I was in, and what makes it even sadder...... neither did I.

 I am looking for my mail, all the while praying I would just wake up in another place in another time where Parkinson's did not exist, and out of the blue, there it was PatientsLikeMe.com.  I logged in and messed around with the profile a little and thought to myself, "Are you crazy?  I'm not putting all this stuff on the street."   I bypassed it and went on to the forum.  For a day or so, I just read and very ackwardly found  my way around the site from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM.  Sometimes I would be having trouble with something and would nod out only to wake up and find the problem solved.  And then one night I was talking about the pain of losing a child in a post.  When I was done a post said, "I know Pokie I lost my son."  A bond was formed that I hope will never end.

Over the span of time until March this friend would just let me enter my virtual world when most were asleep and wander here and there reading everything I could find.  People say I have a big heart but this persons heart is HUMONGOUS.  My friend took me from almost total seclusion to the person I am today. With ever so much tender care, my friend allowed me to play and joke and write poetry and do really nothing that had been done there before.  Soon others began to laugh as I had and the pain was not so bad anymore,  One time in a post I made the statement,"You inspire me to be better." and my friend came back with, "No Pokie you inspire me." and with that my friend went to super status and I found a home at http://PatientsLikeMe.com..love Pokie