Saturday, 18 April 2022

What Would You Do?

Ipswich lupies Robyn, Katrina, Kathy, and me,
with Mayor Paul Pisasale.
We had a lovely lupus catch-up in Ipswich today.

I enjoyed having coffee with three other lovely lupies from the Ipswich area, and as a special treat, our local Mayor Paul Pisasale dropped by for a while.

We're very fortunate in Ipswich, our local mayor is interested in pretty much everything that happens here.  He also has family links to lupus, and so understands our situation more than many other people might.

Paul's visit left us with some interesting questions to think about.  He raised the topic of projects we might want to do and whether he could help us get funding.

That threw me for a moment. The Lupus Association Queensland isn't a formal body, we don't have a bank account, and we don't really do anything except get together for coffee.

That's how the parent group in Brisbane still functions, and we've only got together twice here, and so far it's what we've done.

Don't get me wrong.  That's a lot.  Just being with other people who understand the challenges of everyday life, of having a group that makes me feel "normal" is wonderful.

But here we were today, enjoying the feeling of a group that we could be the "normal" members of, when the Mayor himself suggested there could be money available for a worthwhile project.

It got us thinking and talking.

After a few jokes about asking the mayor to pay for our lunch, a very good idea started to take shape.

There's a natural spa not far from Ipswich.  What if we organised a weekend? Lupies could take our sore joints there, and we could get a specialist pain doctor to come and talk to us about pain management.  I thought about it later and thought maybe a physiotherapist could come and help us with exercise.

It's an exciting idea.  I'm sure many other exciting ideas will come up over our next couple of get-togethers.  And then at least one of us will need to find the brain power and energy to act on some of those ideas.

I've often wondered what I would do if I had money for lupus projects, never imagining that I would actually have any because, really, I don't have the energy or cognitive function for fundraising.

Today we were brainstorming, daydreaming, thinking of all the possible or nearly possible things we could do.  It was exciting. Some of it may actually happen.  Our mayor's the kind of person who knows all about how to make things happen, so there's real possibilities here.

So what would you do, if you had a chance of funding something constructive for lupies in your area? What do you think would make a lasting, positive, difference?

1 comment:

  1. How exciting ! Your mayor is awesome ! I can see that some good ideas already popped up during your brainstorming. Claire

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for being part of the conversation.

Your comment will be visible after moderation.