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    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

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ME Graphics and Advocacy Resources

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
Graphics, photos, videos and cartoons are visual aids that greatly helps our reaching out outside our community for advocacy purposes.

One illustration I keep on returning to is this one by @ballard, with many many thanks.
IMG_1706.JPG


My health authority held a public engagement event on buiding a patient and family policy. I haven't attended anything in the last year but I felt imporant to attend and have a voice into how I want to be cared for.

I made copies of this illustration which i shared with the moderators, and discussed the hierarchy of diseases, how ME and FM are left behind, underfunded, how their supposedly super specialized care was everything but care, more like processing of patients and group therapy. I told them that patients deserve the same access to competent medical care as cancer patients, the same access to imaging and specialized testing, and that 100,000 patients with ME and FM in British Columbia deserved the very best care possible, including those who cannot get out of their home or their beds.

As expected I will be hunkering down as I am definitely feeling the PEM from this outing of mine, but I hope that my voice has been heard.

I want to thank you @ballard for illustrating how I feel every day and for sharing your art for change.
Her other work can be seen (and used, as the website permits it) here: www.cfsgraphics.com

I would love this thread to be used to exchange illustrations and links that people refer to and use for their advocacy work.
 
Last edited:

Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,335
Location
Southern California
Perhaps if you try watching it on youtube? The CC button @AndyPR wrote about doesn't show up for me when the youtube-film is embedded as in here, but it does on a youtube-site. Perhaps that's the solution? o_O

I saw it on youtube and got all the subtitles - it's great, well worth watching -- It shows so clearly and simply exactly what happens with ME/CFS when you try to live a little.
 

ballard

Senior Member
Messages
152
Graphics, photos, videos and cartoons are visual aids that greatly helps our reaching out outside our community for advocacy purposes.

One illustration I keep on returning to is this one by @ballard, with many many thanks. View attachment 21876

My health authority held a public engagement event on buiding a patient and family policy. I haven't attended anything in the last year but I felt imporant to attend and have a voice into how I want to be cared for.

I made copies of this illustration which i shared with the moderators, and discussed the hierarchy of diseases, how ME and FM are left behind, underfunded, how their supposedly super specialized care was everything but care, more like processing of patients and group therapy. I told them that patients deserve the same access to competent medical care as cancer patients, the same access to imaging and specialized testing, and that 100,000 patients with ME and FM in British Columbia deserved the very best care possible, including those who cannot get out of their home or their beds.

As expected I will be hunkering down as I am definitely feeling the PEM from this outing of mine, but I hope that my voice has been heard.

I want to thank you @ballard for illustrating how I feel every day and for sharing your art for change.
Her other work can be seen (and used, as the website permits it) here: www.cfsgraphics.com

I would love this thread to be used to exchange illustrations and links that people refer to and use for their advocacy work.
Graphics, photos, videos and cartoons are visual aids that greatly helps our reaching out outside our community for advocacy purposes.

One illustration I keep on returning to is this one by @ballard, with many many thanks. View attachment 21876

My health authority held a public engagement event on buiding a patient and family policy. I haven't attended anything in the last year but I felt imporant to attend and have a voice into how I want to be cared for.

I made copies of this illustration which i shared with the moderators, and discussed the hierarchy of diseases, how ME and FM are left behind, underfunded, how their supposedly super specialized care was everything but care, more like processing of patients and group therapy. I told them that patients deserve the same access to competent medical care as cancer patients, the same access to imaging and specialized testing, and that 100,000 patients with ME and FM in British Columbia deserved the very best care possible, including those who cannot get out of their home or their beds.

As expected I will be hunkering down as I am definitely feeling the PEM from this outing of mine, but I hope that my voice has been heard.

I want to thank you @ballard for illustrating how I feel every day and for sharing your art for change.
Her other work can be seen (and used, as the website permits it) here: www.cfsgraphics.com

I would love this thread to be used to exchange illustrations and links that people refer to and use for their advocacy work.

Hi @Kati, I'm really thrilled that you could use one of my graphics in your advocacy work. I love your idea of using this thread as a central place to display advocacy graphics. It would be great if there was one place for advocates to look for appropriate graphics to use in their efforts. Perhaps a moderator could move this thread to "Advocacy and Fundraising."
Thank you for giving us (and me) a voice with your advocacy work, and I hope you recover quickly from your PEM. :sluggish:
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
Hi @Kati, I'm really thrilled that you could use one of my graphics in your advocacy work. I love your idea of using this thread as a central place to display advocacy graphics. It would be great if there was one place for advocates to look for appropriate graphics to use in their efforts. Perhaps a moderator could move this thread to "Advocacy and Fundraising."
Thank you for giving us (and me) a voice with your advocacy work, and I hope you recover quickly from your PEM. :sluggish:
As I said @ballard this particular image is very powerful to use for advocacy purposes, both in person and via social media. When I shared it yesterday, I could tell the person took some time to examine the image and in some way, i could tell it made her think.

I particularily like the fact that it's one image, and it tells everything all at once. Your other artwork pieces did that too, though many of them were within a context (which is fine, and needed) - like the foot in the door at NIH for instance.
 

HowToEscape?

Senior Member
Messages
626
To whomever drew up that that "M.E. Adventures" graphic, thank you extremely.
They get it, it sounds like someone whose parent/child his M.E. and it hit 2 key points that seem to be left out of research designs aimed at us:
A. What hits as exertion for us in not what normal experience classes as exertion, it's not the common usage of that word. The disease is so un-normal that we don't have words for our experience.

B. The knockdown effect of what appear to anyone else to be a totally innocuous activity about suitable for your grandparents get worse a day later. There's a brief up from kicking the system to 'go' and from a break in monotony, but then the bill comes due, in pieces, with the notice about 4 hours later, and then about 24 hours after, the debt collector arrives to confiscate one's ability to do even the trivial thing that set him off.

Might someone come up with a male version as well? We need to break the stereotype of this being a one-sex disease.
 

ballard

Senior Member
Messages
152
Here's a new cartoon which is freely available for any non-profit ME/CFS use. When I started cartooning a few years ago, it was my hope to be able to add something to advocacy efforts. Since then, I have heard from people saying that they have used the cartoons in various ways. :)

I've sent this latest cartoon to Francis Collins. Any resemblance to him is entirely coincidental.:p

PrisonNIH.jpeg



This cartoon is my 15th. If you would like to see the entire collection, go to cfsgraphics.com.
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
Here's a new cartoon which is freely available for any non-profit ME/CFS use. When I started cartooning a few years ago, it was my hope to be able to add something to advocacy efforts. Since then, I have heard from people saying that they have used the cartoons in various ways. :)

I've sent this latest cartoon to Francis Collins. Any resemblance to him is entirely coincidental.:p

View attachment 24073


This cartoon is my 15th. If you would like to see the entire collection, go to cfsgraphics.com.
Well done @ballard i was lookimg for the love ❤️ button! i will be sure to tweet this amd use on fb