Tuesday, June 12, 2007

I'm sooooo excited

I’ve been struggling with negativity since my last posting, and I still am, but I’m fighting it and managing to stay on top of things. Today I have felt completely panicked, but I’m also sooooo excited. If you have been a reader of my blog you may know I aim to write a book about women’s experiences of medical conditions of the vaginal area, some of which are actually quite common but often get misdiagnosed, because they are not well known about.

Writing about vaginal medical conditions may seem like an odd choice for my first book, however to me it seemed this was a book that really needed writing. The inspiration came after interviewing my friend Dunya, who has Lichen sclerosus. Lichen sclerosus is a poorly recognised chronic inflammatory disease, affecting the genital and anal areas. Symptoms include blisters, itching, skin becoming fragile, splitting and bleeding, and sometimes fusing together of the labia and/or clitoris.

I am soooo excited because last weekend I met Fabia Brackenbury founder of the National Lichen sclerosus Support group, Kay Thomas who runs a Vulval Pain Support group in London, and Dr David Nunns, a consultant gynaecologist who specialises in Vulval conditions and is the founder of the Vulval Pain Society, and they were all supportive of my book.

Most of all I’m soooo excited because Fabia rang me yesterday to say an article I had written about Dunya was going up on the Vulval Pain Society website. I had not taken the article when I met them, but while Kay was waiting for the train in Cornwall to go back to London, sitting on a bench next to her was the March edition of Vitality Matters open on the page of my article. She showed it to Fabia, who had wanted to put Dunya's story on the website, and on seeing my article decided she didn’t need to reinvent the wheel, she could post up my article. It should be on there by the end of the week.

1 comment:

spirit of ecstacy said...

Hi Jacqui, Fabia here. Just to say that your story is published on the NLSSG website at www.lichensclerosus.org not the Vulval Pain Society website. I enjoyed reading your page about crystals. I wear a large amethyst ring every day and my other stone is moonstone. I enjoy your website! Fabia