Health

#RareDiseaseDay 2017

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In 2015, when I wrote about Rare Disease Day, a friend asked, tongue firmly in cheek, “Why not have Rare Disease Day on February 29th?” I admit that when I learned about Rare Disease Day several years ago, after I was diagnosed with one, a similar joke crossed my mind.

Each year, the last day in February is the date for International Rare Disease Day, and Leap Day or not, today offers the opportunity for us to remind the world that rare diseases are not at all rare.

Today, February 28, is International Rare Disease Day, and “Research” is this year’s theme.
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A Marathon, Not a Sprint

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If you look at this page via a Windows browser, there should be a logo on left side of the tab at top, a little green-brown-yellow blob.

It is a photo of a duck. I first placed the picture there, seen full-size at top, as an inside joke with myself, but the story is worth sharing. (Most of this first appeared in a post from December 2013, “A Duck About Town.”)

The photo was taken in 2013 (with friends alongside: LT and HG), and it was added at the very last second on the very first post written later that same year. If you have looked at this web site once or a thousand times (thanks, mom!), the duck has been there, on whatever device you use, each time. It is this site’s mascot, a companion to each piece I write.
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Enthusiasm Cap

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I have a head cold. Like all head colds, its arrival is poorly timed. By that I mean the cold is in me and my body and there is no time I want anything like this to befall a person I lovingly refer to as “me.”

It has sapped my enthusiasm for any event, game, task, or chore that may require the following: me, my participation, an ability to inhale and exhale without a death rattle, and/or me.
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