Our July meeting was not one of our better one for attendance, but turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for reaching out. I arrived early, as I always do. As I sat in the room, waiting, I remembered I had promised crosses that I make to two of the nurses. Only one nurse was at the nurse' s station, so I ask them to ask the other to come to the room when it was convenient for her. When she came down, she told me of a lady that had been newly diagnosed with TM. I ask her to invite the lady to join us, but she declined. I wasn' t going to be put totally off, so I ask if I may stop by after the meeting, and she agreed.

I waited in the room for half an hour, and no one showed up, so I decided to go meet this lady. I won' t use her name, as she is in denial. She believes she will leave Rehab without TM. I had just gotten there, introduced myself and began a conversation, and Dorothy Danielson showed up.

We went to the room, and ask her to join us, but she refused. We respected her decision. Dorothy has missed only one meeting, and was so late because traffic was backed up due to construction. We decided to keep it informal, so I brought her up to date on what had been happening with our group.

Our news was we had three people join TMA from our state. We have a lady 70 that has had TM for about 16 months, a young man 22 that has TM/Devics, that is a quad as well as blind.

We had a 61-year-old lady, Jeannie Haynes, which had had TM for almost 12 years. Jeannie died on June 30, 2003. She had a lot of other health problems, but I was blessed to get a letter from her. She said she did not care for the computer.

Dorothy and I decided we need to find ways to support our group for the simple things like stamps, do flyers and whatever it takes to get awareness going. We are also putting together a scrapbook of our group. I take lots of pictures, so we will pick the best ones to tell our story as others join us. Plus, we are adding other companies to our recycling of ink cartridge program.

After the meeting I stopped by and spent some time with the lady newly diagnosed. I left several ways for her to contact me, and told her of the support group. I can only pray that she will join us, but we all remember when we were first diagnosed, and thought we' d be OK soon.

Just remember next month' s meeting is Saturday, August 9, 2003.