Mardy Ross, OTR and Founding Executive Director, Lumigrate

I'm writing this from my favorite place in the sun ... my patio .. on the first afternoon of Lumigrate's second year: it launched March 27, 2009.  I'm in shorts and a tank top doing 'what the doctor ordered' and getting Vitamin D, as I learned last fall through a most interesting process of my first big newspaper interview with The Denver Post, about Vitamin D's importance with the immune system.  It was a story related to the upcoming influenza season which was a big too-do about H1N1.  

The interview only mentions me by name and that my great grandfather used 'poison cocktails' as a physician in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, and even in Chicago, which was very affected by the pandemic, he did not have one patient die. The writer was interviewing three CAM providers (complementary and alternative medicine) for the story that I'd connected her with for interviews and she winds her stories with a person's story, so I was the person's story.  

It was funny, because I grew up in the Denver area and have many friends over there -- about half saw the feature and read it and saw my name and figured it had to be me, but nobody called and said 'I saw The Denver Post', but I was at a BBQ/party that afternoon and someone apologized for the fatty dip they brought and I said something about that it was okay because it had Vitamin D ( HAHA) and with flu season that's all that mattered, not our waistlines, and the host said 'I read a story about that online today in The Denver Post -- it was either that or the New York Times online.  And he's an older professional businessman and I thought 'YAY, this education via the Internet thing is REALLY cool!', then to find out many of my friends saw it in the paper copy that came to their house, I was really grateful.  Later in the year as they got sick here and there, I would remind them of the story about what to do for colds and flu that's on Lumigrate and hope that with increased repetition, they'll say in the wellness realm and not the illness realm increasingly.  

So that maybe tells you something about me -- I was raised thinking outside the box, drinking iodine in milk and wondering why my mother would give me something that came out of a bottle with skull and crossbones on it.  I'm joking about that, because my grandfather's lovely wife was my beloved 'Nanny' who was living with our family after he had passed away before I was born and she certainly wouldn't let anything bad happen to me. I care deeply about my friends and family, and believe that "I''m here to do what I'm doing with Lumigrate."  I've made a lot of choices that were very difficult ones and taken the less traveled path to be consulting and providing people with education about the 'occupation of health care' through a website instead of a school, clinic, hospital or skilled nursing facility.  I hope you find Lumigrate a progressive, valid, streamlined and FUN hub of information for YOU and your family, friends, coworkers and neighbors.  We're in this together and "When you know better you do better", as Maya Angelou famously has said in the past.  My version is "Live and Learn! Learn and Live Better!!"

The 'Cliffs Notes Version' of my life so far: 

Born 1960 in Colorado.  Raised in Colorado.  Always have lived in Colorado but I've moved 18 times in 25 years I think I counted, mosty since going into health care or college for it.  Graduated Colorado State Occupational Therapy program with a B.S. in 1996. Today a Masters of Science is required, but I'm grandfathered with a bachelors.  (PTs now need to have doctorates, it used to be Masters -- long history of essentially a rivalry with PT; the history of how OT came to be is very interesting and is here on Lumigrate if you're interested).

I have experience in skilled nursing sub-acute rehab, home health, rehab unit, outpatient rehab/ neuro team, hospital/ neuro team, driving rehab, outpatient / neuro and supervision of hand therapy specialist who was a brilliant Certified OT Assistant and amazing teacher to me in many ways who I will always appreciate our having done what we did when we did! He had been certified in a progressive technique many chiropractors and PTs also get certified in called Active Release Technique, and I can't imagine a hand therapist NOT having those skills, or a PT.  I've brought a DC/chiropractor to Lumigrate.com to write about ART, so if you're interested in THAT, search on ART and you'll find it!

I co-founded and lead a Fibromyalgia Forum in that big, new, 'top shelf' allopathic medical clinic / building (ConMed, convenational medicine) which gave me the idea in 2007 to create what you now see as Lumigrate, which launched after 18 months of building and recording and all the details on March 27, 2009.  Oh, yeah, and moving my office out of that building to help with the startup of a progressive integrative medicine center.  New families and businesses have a while to 'gel' and many changes occurred and I moved to a neighboring building in order to shoot the videos you see if you click on the Videos tab.  

The videos are like a time capsule, because they were extensively consuming to record with high quality, edit and put the paperwork together that arrives in your email with the file for the video which then resides on your hard drive and can be watched unlimited times.  The only provider seen in video at the IMC by the second to third year was the MD, as the center kind of 'morphed' into something that is helping a whole different population now, and that's a wonderful thing.  All the providers you see in video are still in Grand Junction at separate clinics and in my opinion, able to have a 'net' cast over the city that has a broader catching area and can benefit more people.  I've worked to connect those providers that I think are among the best at treating complex issues, and formed something called the (Lumi)GRATE Groove of the Grand Valley.  We're GROOVY people but also can wear a groove from door to door and be 'virtually' connected to benefit patients by sharing and discussing and learning about them together.  It's hard for providers to know who to refer to, and that's what I felt I could do to help everyone.  

I have fond memories and learned a lot from that time AND it gave me an immersion about the theory at least of 'integrative medicine' and I saw a lot of seminars related to 'functional medicine' which is where I've stayed with the type of information I put on Lumigrate -- it has to do with finding the underlying causes of an issue and solving it!  And medications and surgieries might be the fourth tier a person considers (unless it's an emergent problem like an infection or a body part going awry that will kill the person if not treated 'stat').  It was like my 'masters degree', as I was along  for the ride for two years essentially, and then I was ready for the PhD portion of Lumigrate and my career, which is to create a website of North American/US providers who are progressive and valid, consulting with people from across the country through technologies and actively providing information through the Internet.  You can find them HERE and then follow out AND THEY CAN FIND EACH OTHER HERE and have a wonderful referral network.  It's a team approach based on collaboration and not competition.  Ethics are a requirement, and while everyone has to make a living and I believe people who work hard should be rewarded for that, nobody here is trying to 'get rich'; all the providers have a SINCERE interest in helping people.  That is the ethical commonality.  

My Personal Health History: Challenges and Successes; Much to Learn and Teach About Related to "The Occupation of Health Care"

I've had chronic illness since my 20s and in particular 'fibromyalgia' since the mid 1990s, when I was in OT school.  After many years of ick and ouch I have been fortunate to have found solutions and learned to manage it and I believe I am well on the way to reversing it and am looking forward to seeing where I end up! At the time Lumigrate launched, I had been doing so well the doctors and I thought I no longer 'had fibromyalgia' and then I had a whopping collision of family matters at a time I had to be full time with getting Lumigrate to do what I was creating it to be, and I literally burned the candle at both ends.  So I also respect the component that is about 'balance' and recognize that is an 'ideal' and sometimes it just is not possible, but you do your best and you just are where you are and you do what you can each day.  Everyone is where they are in the process.  So THAT is the 'nutshell' version of my life related to Lumigrate. 

For those that want the LONG version of my story, read on please.  If not, no worries -- go on and enjoy yourself at our many hundreds of items here to learn from.  There is a good mix of serious content, FUN, other people writing about their experiences, and many quality providers most of all, who I'm so very proud to have at Lumigrate and thank them here and as often as I can.  So please thank them as well by writing a comment, calling them, emailing them, or if you inquire with them, letting them know you found them through Lumigrate OR seeing them at Lumigrate was a validation because of our standards of quality.    

The more detailed history for those who like more information: 

I came from a pretty 'average American family' for having been born in 1960 and raised in a rural area outside of Denver in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, USA.  I inherited genes from both parents like anyone else (nature) and was nurtured by a family that had their own positives as well as challenges.   This included an ability for left brained education as well as creativity, the ability to be alone or very social, and included a predisposition for food allergies which I finally figured out at age 35, the crumbly instead of bungee-like disk material, and alcoholism which ran on my mother's side and indirectly took her life at age 62 and the whole way before that had it's impact on me and all the systems around her.   

My dad had a good job at a great company in the day and we had state of the art health care, so I had all the immunizations and dental fillings and stuff like that which most people had back then, AND I grew up on what had been a potato farm in the past with a shallow well that was fed by waters that leached from septic system as well as the agricultural lands upflow from it. 

Who knows where exactly I got all the heavy metals I found out were lurking in my tissues in my mid 40s (and addressed with 'chelation' with good results), but it is basically what is described in the free 20 minute "Chronic Illness: Full Barrel Syndrome" video by naturopath Christopher Lepisto here on Lumigrate.  Mercury likely from fillings and immunizations, the others likely from the second hand and third hand smoke that I knew was killing me as a kid but I was powerless to do anything about short of run away.  Yes, I was learning at a very young age that your elders are not necessarily wiser than YOU are. 

Yes, that's an invitation for you to click on the home page and look at that YOU model, because what I'm saying there is that YOU truly are your own best doctor, wise person, guide.  I've developed Lumigrate to provide all the You people that want to find their way to Lumigrate to have a place of progressive, valid, streamlined and FUN information to educate themselves about progressive health concepts.  This is best described as 'integrative medicine' but do we really need to use that kind of label?  Maybe not -- maybe we're going to be more about 'collaborative care' or in the future something will be called 'Lumigrate Medicine'.  Who knows, but you are here and now YOU are part of our process.

I somehow survived my first 18 years and graduated in the top 25% of my class from a fairly high socio-economic public school.  I went to Colorado State University and lived in the biggest dorm there was (the luck of the draw, not my choice), which happened to be the biggest party dorm on campus.  At that time CSU was known as one of the biggest party schools in the United States but that's not why I went there, I actually rarely had alcohol and never did any illegal substances before I went to college.  My mother always offered it to me and I didn't want it.  But when placed away from home in an environment where they literally paid for beer on our floors with our student fees in those days, and the 'luck' of my other friends being on a floor with one of the most FUN gals I've ever known who came from Chicago and had a blender for making daiquiris, my life changed.  We all made it through college except the Chicago gal, who just died last year related to cancer I believe, having had a very successful career and home life in her 40s.  

However, I didn't graduate anywhere near on schedule -- it took me until I was 36!!  Turns out I had a few learning disabilities that didn't surface until I was in my late 20s, which interestingly got worse and so diagnosed when I got a really significant case of what is now called 'chronic fatigue syndrome'.  Again, refer to the full barrel syndrome analogy and in my mid 20s I had gotten an amazingly good job for a researcher at the university which came with long hours and stress/deadlines AND fumes with a brand new building our growing program moved into, my mother had died suddenly, my dad fell apart and needed our support more so than he would have had he not had his own history of things that he had not cleared up about his past and present.  A close friend was murdered and a coworker died all in the same 2 month period of time, which corresponded with when I got remarried to a man who had a daughter who at the time had some significant 'issues'. 

By 'significant', I mean there was law enforcement and psychiatric and expensive hospitalization involved, sex abuse via her mother's friends, and to top it off my husband had seizure disorder that was out of control due to generic meds that were one of the only cases proven of them not being up to standards, and MRSA in his brain fluid.  Luckily I was very good at saving money and was able to convince him to let me pay our share and he could repay me, which he did very rapidly.  Important to mention, he smoked too, and we filtered the air in the room he smoked it and he went outside when the weather and his head allowed him.  We also did woodworking together and he couldn't be around the finishing solutions so I did it and didn't know about uptake through the skin, though I did wear a very good respirator.  I went from being an avid hiker, skier, outdoorsy type in my youth to not being able to walk a block at age 29.  

I fortunately had a very good GP who referred me to a very good ENT specialist and I got things back on track pretty fast.  I also sat and just figured a lot of things out.  I also read everything I could find in books, this was 1989 so no Internet yet.  I joined organizations such as would be the National Fibromyalgia Association today and read their newsletters.  I did what my doctors advised and I got in touch with myself -- I became spiritual through this which is another story unto itself for another time perhaps.  Suffice it to say 'spirit' of 'body, mind, spirit' medicine came to me through my having lost my body and mind at that time, once I had it back on track and was so appreciative and trying to figure out 'why did this happen to me?'

And then I was kind of ushered back to college by wise men and women around me, and "G-d", and as Yenta here in Lumigrate's Spirituality Forum would say.  My husband tutored me patiently in math, as my father had done when I was a kid, in math.  I have an ability for calculations but the dyslexia and central focusing issues make equations very difficult for me to 'mentally hold onto'.  I was having tremendously frequent migraines and the medications back then made everything worse so I had to persevere through many hard days of work and then classes and tests at night.  My husband became unsupportive of my going back to college out of insecurities about what would change when I had a college degree as an occupational therapist I believe.  I made the very hard decision at the age of 32 that for the first time in my life I had to put what I needed FIRST. I've continued to be aware of this and have had the typical issues anyone has when they change the 'system'; family has a difficult time adjusting, as do some friends, but as one door closes another opens and it goes into a room that is more comfortable for you, I have experienced. 

Since we had met at work, I chose to quit my very good job and take a big pay step or three down to work at the Health Education department at Colorado State University which I had a sense to do, and it turned out the be the most valuable thing I have ever done.  I learned more from the health educator, drug and alcohol educator, and social worker there whose focus was eating disorders and cultural sensitivity than I did in the next few years of coursework in the OT program.  I appreciate how hard the OT staff wanted things to be the best, as it was one of the best few in the country at the time, but it was a typical higher education hoop jumping.  I got more chemicals from cadaver anatomy, stressed out taking the same classes as the pre-med students did and now I'm grateful for it because I think it's part of why I believe something like Lumigrate can help people.  We have someone who is using Lumigrate as a platform for his PhD in how Internet learning can trump formal programs!  I have a hunch he's going to be able to prove his hypothesis, and look forward to 2012 and finding out! 

I have to also say I truly had wonderful times with my classmates who loved to cook and play Pictionary at my house or another one of the older students who had a big enough house for us all.  We had FUN in class and really were pretty close for 75 people ranging in age from 22 to 55! The younger ones had some pretty cool parties too where they'd play retro music thinking we wanted to hear disco...  it was FUNNY.  But they included us mature students in and it really was a wonderful group and experience overall.  But I came out of school not having any information about splinting of the upper extremity and wheelchair positioning, two things that are dumped upon OTs these days and which were problematic for me and have made me be able to say 'don't count on that the people you're paying to give you advise have been trained properly in what they are seeing you for'.  I wasn't comfortable in those positions and said 'no' and imagine .... was let go one way or another.

Sorry, it's people's lives and livelihoods at stake with wheelchairs and hands, folks.  But that leaves a need for providers to come and learn from those that DO know about these things and guess what?  Lumigrate has both a wheelchair positioning expert AND a hand therapy expert in the mix now!  An MD and a compounding pharmacist who can guide people to solutions related to hormones and compounded pharmaceuticals.  The possibilities are endless really, and we are off to a good start after our first year, I feel.  So thank you for that those that were here! 

In 1993, at the age of 33, I was accepted into the OT program and graduated in 1996 at the age of 36. In those years I came down with some very scary symptoms which appeared to be MS and since the HMO I could COBRA from CSU when I quit had a $1m maximum on it, I took out a policy with Mutual of Omaha which had a $3m maximum but a $10,000 deductible, and so that is when my medical expenses started: my first MRIs were over $10,000 so I hit my deductible right off the bat!  At least the spinal tap they paid for, I used to joke. The neurologist who was a young pregnant woman who I really liked had no idea what could be causing my headaches, muscle weakness, though I did have a very bad disk which I had the option of having removed OR doing PT.  I opted for PT.  One disk above and two below have now also slipped and it depends who you ask what they think about it -- it's 'stable and skiing should be fine' or it's 'precarious, be careful, don't even golf'. 

I took it upon myself to ask about food allergies and she said 'maybe' and I found a progressive MD with a little integrative clinic at the base of the mountains who for $400 tested my food allergies with one vial of blood and came up with dairy, wheat and eggs.  I quit eating them thinking I'd maybe feel a little better in a month and in 3 days I was about 75% well!  Wowsers, did THAT change my life, and now yours, since I'm including these kinds of doctors and information on Lumigrate.  Seeking it out, roping busy and very valid and good providers into taking time out of their busy schedules to write and post and 'be' here at Lumigrate for YOU.

So I go inside to that YOU inside of me and ask that wise place inside and go from there all the time.  I got back to skiing last year.  This year I didn't risk it partly because I cannot afford it but also because if I even hurt my arm or something, Lumigrate is my #1 priority right now.  It will snow again next year and we'll see!  At least I got a handful of days in last year and proved to myself and others around me how much BETTER I am now!

I did wonderful internships at the VA in Denver in both the hospital/ nursing home as well as the locked psychiatric unit.  I was hired and started working on the last day of my internship.  No rest for the wicked or the ambitious, eh?  Well, I had been supporting myself and my husbands to one extent or another since I was 19 and had just not been able to work for the two years I was in the OT program as there is no way you have time to also have a job the way they put the classes together with all the group projects.  At that time salaries were high for medical workers such as OTs and that is part of the reason I went into it and quit the very good job I had that it turns out, I would have made more money at had I never quit to go back to college!  The government changed how they reimburse therapist about a year after I graduated, devastating the therapy industry with FIFTY PERCENT unemployment.  Think about that!

But I got a very poorly paying job that at least utilized the 'R' after my name that I estimate cost me $150,000 when you factor in my loss of income for 3 years (internships for OTs are generally non paying).  It was in driving rehabilitation and I learned a lot from the company AND I met a wonderful woman who worked for a hospital driving program who would take my place when I asked her to after two grueling years of driving between cities in a heavy traffic area like Denver on top of very long days. 

In those years my health deteriorated and I do believe I was at great risk of dying either of a car crash falling asleep or chronic problems that were developing, which today would be called 'type 2 diabetes'.  My father basically had a mini-intervention with me and encouraged me to quit, but since I care so very much about my patients/ clients and program and employer I was loyal to, it took many months to be out the door and resting.  I was beyond exhausted. 

One delay was caused by the replacement needing to help another OTR driving person who had cancer, and then by her own re-occurrence of cancer literally the DAY she came in to start training.  So there I was having resigned with an employer that didn't want me to resign and the uncomfortability of months of being there.  It made my skin toughen, which was needed.

I tried to get a job in the Utilities in Colorado Springs but they had a hiring 'slush' on.  I sat for testing with a management head hunter firm and since I hadn't used computers at my health education job or in the OT program or with my jobs as an OT except to write emails and Word, I had to study up on the spreadsheets, databases, word processing that I'd been at an expert level at just seven years before in the good old DOS days.  I got my hair cut one day and the stylist mentioned her sister was an OT and was quitting at a place she liked and so I called. 

That's how I got back into being an OTR again in skilled nursing sub-acute rehabilitation, and I immediately suffered a fall in a dark parking lot with a hole in the parking lot, flaring up what I now knew to be 'fibromyalgia'.  That company told me if I worked for them for three months in the much harder to walk around building of the two they had contracts in, because the OTR there was not liked by the administration, they'd give me a permanent job with health insurance and my COBRA was going to come to an end in a while.  But when they got my paperwork to enroll me in their self-insured policy and saw I had 'fibromyalgia', the owner called and offered to pay me a little more per hour but they weren't going to honor their promise.  Believe it or not, Dept of Labor told me they reported that I'd failed to report to work the next day.  That wasn't the case; the job that was to start March 1 of 2002 had been ripped out from under me an hour before close of business; I'd already notified my former employer I wasnt' going to need insurance on my COBRA that March 1!  What a mess.  But I was learning and learning and one day I would finally resign myself to that the medical industry was a shambles and I could either be part of the solution or part of the problem.  I hope you see Lumigrate as the former! 

I got consumer credit counseling for the second time and this time had someone competent; the first time after the big layoffs happened and I'd had some health expenses for maybe only two years that were only a fraction of what they have gone on to be, but enough so that they depleted my savings I'd accrued all those years I was healthy, as I started maxing out IRAs when I was in my mid 20s as soon as I got that good job at the University,  I didn't know how incompetent the woman was.  This second more experienced gentleman made me feel accepting that bankruptcy was for people who had legitimate things happen as I had but I had a wealthy family member using me for a 'Crummy Trust' and I needed to include it in the bankruptcy.  She was shamed by her attorney into helping me since it turns out she was a multi millionaire, but in her non-compassionate way since she'd never had a chronic illness and came from our family work ethic 'history', she loaned me HALF the money I needed, which kept me having to work and in debt and fatigue and my health continued to deteriorate.  I took jobs with employers that I thought might not be good and weren't because of insurance benefits; I am 'uninsurable' with fibromyalgia, and don't have a spouse.  But you see, it kept me learning all these things that eventually led to Lumigrate ....  

I'll simplify the details by saying that the medical companies have had their heads spinning for years now as they adjusted to the impending crisis.  They can set you up to be unethical which I just will not do and I'm proud to say that, to be honest.  One even dinged me and fired me for doing NOT doing something that they didn't know was illegal and any idiot knows you can't charge for your documentation time when not in the presence of the patient. 

Then six years ago a major thing happened, and I'll preface this by saying I now believe ALL of this happened to me in order for me to end up being right where I am right now doing what I am.   I'd signed an agreement to drop the multimillion dollar lawsuit against that City hospital system with the ability to talk about it (HAH, just DID! WORTH EVERY DOLLAR to help educate people about the medical industry reality today on Lumigrate) because I chose to have positivity in my life and not drag into years of what a lawsuit would entail (my lawyer did an excellent job of giving me the choice and pointing it out and saying he didn't need my $50,000 it would cost me). I was not working and living off of -- believe it or not --  the monies the ankle injury insurance paid me for not suing them (no kidding -- KARMA???  An insurance company paying 3x what they had to just because I'd been honest and they could see it from the photos they ended up reviewing of how bruised and swollen I was and knowing I'd worked lifting people on a leg like that).  

A company I had worked for before that really liked me asked me to work for 2 months in Grand Junction, a little city near the Utah border in western Colorado.  I'd worked there before for '2 weeks' which turned into 2 months and a company riding me about my dinner costs when in fact I was eating HEALTHY gluten free and dairy free foods like vegetables and fish instead of at the Holiday Inn where they put me, because I knew that I was all better after having found out I was allergic to wheat and dairy and ate in compliance  (The manager when he came stayed at the Adams Mark, the 'high end' motel that is now 'Double Tree' here, so I asked them if they'd rather I move there or come home and they left me alone.) 

I wasn't well enough to work 2 months and drive back 'home' every now and then -- my father was aging and infirm and I was doing quite a lot of care for him and I also had a significant relationship and friends AND a successful and FUN nonprofit I was a founding member of in Colorado Springs.  They called back in a month and said the OT they sent from a staffing agency was a disaster and asked if I would go for three weeks.  I said yes... I needed the money. 

And the rest as they say, 'is history'.  I ended up figuring out finally that I cannot function in companies that have poor management and leadership which is as much me as it is them; it's not an indictment of them, it is just my factual and honest opinion.  And that's just the way I am, again not that much different than most middle aged women in America these days, we are who we are and we've come to settle in with it. 

Through a series of amazing 'coincidences' I ended up starting my own business to provide therapy services in a new and very nice and progressive allopathic medical building and meeting Chris Young and forming a fibromyalgia forum based on amazing Helen who came like an inspiration to me as my first patient after New Years two years after I moved here to the day!  The Forum wanted to have the providers in Junction who had helped so many of us get better so I invited them and now you see them on Lumigrate in either video or the Forums, or they are on their way to writing. 

You'll meet them here on Lumigrate in one place or another if you look around. 

• Scott Rollins, MD (videos x 2) and he has posted some conversations in the Forums in the past when he wasn't as busy as he is now), who the second I met him a light bulb sound hit me that I now recognize as someone who just WAS going to be in my life's path to change it as it was intended to happen by someone bigger than me. 
• Christopher Lepisto, ND (videos x3, one free, the 20 minute full barrel one I recommend to every person on the planet who will listen) who had been collaborating with Dr. Rollins about progressive thinking in what I call 'cross pollinating'.
• Chris Young (videos x 2, both free) naturally as he co-lead the Forum with me and has done some amazing presentations that we just have not produced about chronic pain and about chronic stress in childhood and illness in adulthood. 
• Paula King, PhD. (video on Strategies for Lasting Change and I hope to say she'll be in the Forums in the future or in future media 'events' related to Lumigrate)
• April Schulte-Barclay (Forum on Acupuncture).

I simply saw that in my work in the clinic my revenues kept getting less from insurances, my overhead went up, and I was mostly teaching patients how to be medical consumers in what I call 'the occupation of health care'.  I saw these amazing presentations going on and thought how many more people could benefit from them.  The relative who had been so frugal with me in the past had passed away leaving a big whole in my life and family, but had generously left money which I chose to share with the world and put it into starting Lumigrate. 

My goals are simple really: To leave the world a better place than when I found it and I'm intending to do that through Lumigrate in the end.  To help more people than I was able to seeing patients 1:1 and I've met that within the first year, which is very confirming.  To make a living as I had intended to do when I quite my good government job that I'd be able to retire from this coming Friday when I turn 50, as I would have had the rule of 80s (age and # of years add to 80; I started typing statistics for the University when I was 19 which is what then landed me the very good job in my mid 20s, plus the researcher/boss saw I had an attitude and people skills I guess).  To be as healthy as I would have been had I had all the money and insurances and health care advantages, vacations, disability insurance if I needed it (which I did, but didn't have) and to work at this really diligently and soulfully and have it help a LOT of people. 

I want Lumigrate to be healthy and robust too and I do this by nurturing and collaborating with other businesses, providers and the public / consumers that are operating in my same 'groove' with ethics and good intentions about people and health care and who are also working consistently to advance health care to people. And THOSE, are who you will see with Forums of their own certainly. 

Again, anyone and all are invited to write and there is an incredible amount of deeply rich and wonderful writers who have found us in the last year -- virtually not one issue in our first year and the quality far surpassed my highest hopes.  If someone right now asked me what the proudest thing I have done in my whole life, I would say to have created a place where you can read what is written by others here in the Forums at Lumigrate.  Definitely.  The other was to have completed my education with all the things I maneuvered through over the 36 years before that. 

So I hope you have enjoyed my story, and this segue to lead you read about the other resident experts of Lumigrate, who I hope will put their own stories in their own ways here.  I certainly don't expect any of them to be as long, but I do hope they are as interesting and I also hope they will inspire you as they have me once I started being privy to THEIR stories.  

~~ Here's to our second year and of getting to trust that we are all in this together and if we all grab and oar that many hands will make light work and we'll row this boat with as many good people as we can get on board to a better health place together ~~ Mardy