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.