Tuesday, February 18, 2020

NEWLY UPDATED: Facebook Groups for ME/CFS

Connect with others from your couch, recliner, or bed!
Ah, I have been neglecting this blog lately (and my book blog, too!). I have been working hard to finish formatting my book for print, so that I can upload it and make it available in paperback. I had hired a formatter earlier this year, but she spent three weeks on it and then quit abruptly, leaving me with a half-finished print book. Though I have used Word for over 35+ years as a basic word processor, I knew absolutely nothing about how to use its more complicated formatting functions ... nor what to do when it seemed to have a mind of its own! Thanks in great part to Google and the global online community, I think I have finally solved my unsolvable formatting problems. I just have to do one more thorough proofing, save it as a pdf file and hope that doesn't mess everything up, and then I can finally upload it to Amazon and other vendors. It should be available in another week or so, and the e-book is available NOW on multiple platforms.

In the meantime, a friend let me know today that an older post of mine from 2011, New Online Groups for Teens and Parents, had links in it that weren't working right anymore, so I updated it today. In addition to fixing the existing links and deleting ones that no longer worked, I also added some new groups to the post. So, it is now an up-to-date list of many of the best groups for ME/CFS patients on Facebook, with a special focus on groups for young people (though there are groups included there for everyone).

If you are not on Facebook and have no desire to be, some people set up an account with a pseudonym (some use their first and middle names or just make something up) and a fake birthdate and only use their account for interacting with other patients in the many groups available. I explain in that post how life-changing it was for me and for my son to connect with other people like this, so I highly recommend you give it a try!

And, I only included a small list of the groups I know best, but if you know of other online groups (on Facebook or elsewhere) that you'd recommend for ME/CFS patients, please leave them in the comments below.

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