Although I previously thanked "everyone who has supported and/or worked with me over the years" following my win in the "Lifetime Achievement" categor in the Wego Health awards, I thought I really should explicitly thank my mother, Vera Kindlon.
In recent years she has reduced her direct ME workload quite a lot, as befits someone of her age, but still devotes many hours to supporting me, freeing me up to use my limited energy on ME activities along with some leisure activities so that my energy isn't just spent on the bare essentials of surviving. But in the late 1990s and for many years in the 2000s, she was directly heavily involved in ME activities herself, spending many hundreds of hours each year on ME work as a volunteer.
Some of the Irish ME/CFS Association* activities she has been involved in:
- hosting dozens of meetings in Dublin;
- dealing with many calls and some written correspondence from members and enquirers;
- dealing with a lot of media enquiries, including appearing several times on TV and doing over 100 radio interviews;
- photocopying tens of thousands of newsletter issues that were sent to members and mailshots to former enquirers/meeting attendees;
- putting stamps on envelopes and posting such newsletters;
- for over 20 years running the Irish ME/CFS Association Christmas card fundraiser from our house dealing with orders for many thousands of packs;
- running the blue ribbon fundraiser: in total, this has raised tens of thousands of euros for the Association's awareness-raising activities and for our research fund through many collections throughout Ireland. Mum herself hosted many collections in our local area, raising thousands herself. Some years she even ended up cutting up and pinning blue ribbons manually;
- helping with some other fundraising ventures such as golf classics and on a few occasions, travelling to be presented with cheques;
- reading hundreds of ME patient organisation magazines looking for articles that would be suitable for the Association's newsletter and/or for dealing with specific enquiries we might receive;
- lots and lots of photocopying e.g. thousands of free information packs; thousands of press releases; lots of magazine articles for the newsletter and specific enquiries;
- thousands of times posting letters and parcels;
- lodging cheques, postal orders, etc. hundreds of times;
- collecting the post in Dublin city centre many hundreds of times;
- putting up with an overcrowded house (!) where several rooms were part storerooms and/or full of files. This didn't stop when we went away each summer to our mobile home as I like to bring lots of stuff.
- Various administrative activities on the computer.
And probably lots of other activities I'm probably forgetting.
I want to also acknowledge my father, Ney Kindlon, for his direct support and for putting up with a house that was more like an office a lot of the time, on top of all the restrictions that go with living with someone severely affected by ME. Also, for all his financial support to us both: as I have matured, I have grown to better appreciate all the work, responsibility and hassle he has had to put up with in running his company for decades. His hours have only reduced in the last couple of years, despite being well into his seventies. So while his direct involvement in ME activities of the Irish ME/CFS Association has been relatively small, his indirect support has been invaluable.
So a big thank you to them both.
* The Irish ME/CFS Association for many years was known as the Irish ME/CFS Support Group
