Opugirl, first of all I am proud of you (and a little bit jealous) that you are well now. I hope to get well soon myself. That said, I strongly believe in the power of marketing. I cannot turn anywhere without seeing some sort of company marketing their products.
Here are my ideas:
1.) As of right now, 86,006 people have viewed the "new to Lyme post". If most of these people were to post in their Facebook or Tweet about
Lyme, the reach would be tremendous.
2.) We could pick a day down the road and make it Lyme disease awareness day.
A.) We could ask the webmasters of Lyme disease sites to help promote the date.
B.) We could write to the sites where we buy our herbs & products to help promote the day.
C.) We could write to the media and make them aware of this day. Imagine if on this day Kathy Couric, Oprah, Jay Leno, The view, Rachel ray all spoke about
Lyme. The news media would go crazy for that.
4.) We could design a ribbon like the pink one for breasts to bring Lyme awareness and sell this at cost.
5.) We could design a t-shirt for Lyme and submit it to a t-shirt company. We would then let people know that it is available so they can buy one for them and for their family to promote the illness.
6.) PBS is great at allowing regular people submit stories. Boston’s PBS is one of the most influential PBS broadcasters that I know of. We could ask people here and on other bulletin board sites to submit their stories via video to youtube. We would compile these stories and make a film and submit it to PBS.
In my opinion, I think that Lyme disease is not being marketed correctly. The name itself takes importance out of it. Before I got infected, I had heard of Lyme disease but thought it was something you got sick of if you ate Lyme (the type that you put in your garden soil) so I never paid attention to it.
I came up with the acronym MEBBB (Mycoplasma, Erhlichia, Borrelia burgdorferi, Bartonella, Babesiosis) to better identify this illness and its co-infections. Maybe an acronym or a better name for it might change people's perception of it.
Although I have never had cancer or any serious disease prior to Lyme, I think that it is as serious as cancer or AIDS. This is why: It infects the entire body like AIDS, it destroys organs like cancer, it incapacitates the human body, it affects like MS, Alzheimer’s, Fibromyalgia, and it can kill. All of this is not mentioned when Lyme is spoken about
. Instead, most people that are aware of it (although not educated on it) think that it can be cured with a monthly dose of antibiotics.
How can something that can be cured in a month with a pill be dangerous? Now if they knew that once infected, you carry it for life and that there is no cure for it, no vaccination and that it can cripple you, blind you, that the Red Cross believes their blood banks are infected with it and that it can be spread by a fly, mosquito, ticks and via human contact (semen, saliva). And worse of all, that our current medical professionals are inept at recognizing it, treating it, or even acknowledging its true destruction potential. If the message above was vocalized by the media, Lyme would get the respect it deserves.
Of course, in fear that panic would ensue in the general population after the true came out, some institutions (private and public) would do everything in their power to mute the message.
Although I don't have the mental and physical strength to do something about
it, I will contribute in any way that I can to help you Opugirl to carry your message across in my side of the neighborhood.
Post Edited (Healing98) : 10/18/2013 11:52:12 AM (GMT-6)