Meet Carter

www.rarediseaseday.us
Mission:
Join the movement today and take action!

On the last day of February each year, the rare disease community comes together to raise awareness and celebrate our shared strength. NORD (National Organization for Rare Disorders) and our partner organizations proudly sponsor U.S. Rare Disease Day.

Some facts from NORD about rare diseases:

• A rare or “orphan” disease affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States.

• There are more than 6,000 rare diseases.

• Approximately 30 million Americans (about 10%) are affected by a rare disease.

We all come together on Rare Disease Day to:

• Raise awareness about rare disease

• Champion research efforts toward development of new treatments

• Support provision of resources for patients and families

Together we can make a difference.
Alone we are rare. Together we are strong.

Take action Now:

Write Your Governor
http://www.rarediseaseday.us/rdd/take-action/write-your-governor/

Become a Partner
http://rarediseaseday.us/rdd/take-action/become-a-partner/

As we approach the two month mark since we lost our boy, I’ve learned a lot about my friends, my family, my wife, and my self. The one thing that stands out, is everyone handles grief differently. Some handle it internally, some externally. Some handle it with emotions, some are stoic. Some handle it bad, some good. Some decide to handle it, some don’t. The fact is that grief is personal. It’s born from within and normally develops within ones psychy until one day…BLAM!  It’s released or better yet revealed, kind of like a second personality in a schizo’. It consumes you and takes over your existing personality. It’s wierd because it seems to create thoughts of hate, doubt, fear, guilt, loneliness, anger, suicide, helplessness, and most of all darkness. Some would say that these are all evil in nature, and thoughts like this are unhealthy, but ironically we have to go through grief to heal. You know when grief reaveals it self, it’s normally due to a life changing, monumentally bad frickin’ time in one’s life that is associated with loss…you would think that to overcome that loss that you would immediately feel a sense of love, happiness, warmth, etc… to get you through an already dark time. NO! greif comes out and consumes you and if you can make it through the darkness…well let’s just say what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!

Grief is so personal, that other people don’t have the right to tell you how to handle your grief… PERIOD! You must battle it alone, no matter how bad you want to believe that you are not alone, you are. Don’t get me wrong, hopefully the ones who love you will be there to bring you out of the darkness at times, but the battle continues and at this point I just don’t know when it will end. Personally, my grief is the size of a gorilla on steroids who played Major League Baseball in the late 90’s, and he is really whacking the hell out of the ball directly into my mid-section (if that makes sense).  Luckily some people nicknamed me the Silverback and this old ape isn’t going down without a fight.

Yea… personally, I choose to fight!

LOVE YOU BOO!