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The first leg of this flight was the best I’ve had in years. I chit-chatted at the gate with another invisibly disabled person for half an hour and the three of us (including his wife) kept each other very amused, then wound up with not just one, but two, delightful neighbors.

No sooner had I noticed, and enjoyed, the fact that I could converse for an hour and a half without saying “CRPS”, than one of my lovely neighbors turned to me and said, “And what do you do?”

“I’m a writer.” A surefire conversation-starter, that.

Inevitably, “What do you write?”

I talked, not so much about the disease, but about my core group of CRPS friends, most of us in different countries. I described our ongoing efforts to publicize the disease by surfacing the art and creative work of people with CRPS, of pooling our own information about what works both within and outside the standard medical model, and our hope, one day, to be funding research to quantify what works in fields that have been completely overlooked (I’m being tactful) for so long.

I got what could be THE critical referral to a lawyer who has relevant experience in nonprofit structure. That alone might have been worth the price of the ticket.

Then the entire plane sang “Happy Birthday” to my other lovely neighbor.

It really was a great flight.

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