Happy New Year to you all!
I hope you had a great Christmas. As anyone who’s ever spoken to me will realise, I’m from Lancashire and we tend to spend some of Christmas with our family. Unfortunately, our Christmas celebrations were cut short this year when my husband got the flu – and not man flu, the real macoy! It was strange having my husband ill and me being ok – a real role reversal as it’s usually the other way around!
Despite that, it was good to see our families over Christmas, but we will have a re-run when John is back to normal.
We had a better time over New Year with both family and friends visiting us. We’re hoping for a healthier 2009 for us all!
On a personal note, I’m looking forward to returning to work in January having been off for almost 3 months with health problems. I’m not good at taking it easy, so being told to “rest and relax” hasn’t been easy for me and I’m looking forward to getting back to somewhere near normal.
For the Society, it looks like 2009 will be another milestone year. We achieved so much last year having Chris on board full-time to keep things moving along, but we’ve still got so much to achieve. Our focus for next year is fundraising (no surprise to anyone there!), establishing more local support groups (our next launch is planned for February); working out the NHS National Commissioning Service to establish whether Behçet’s could fall within their remit and finally continuing to raise awareness both in the media, in parliament and with medical professionals.
Finally, we’ll be celebrating our 25th Anniversary throughout the year. It’s amazing that our small charity has survived for so long and helped countless people during these 25 years. It’s a real tribute to all the people who have been involved throughout the years from the original trustees along with Judith Buckle all the way to the present day volunteers. I feel privileged to work with the current trustees and helpline volunteers who are incredibly dedicated.
I wish you all a healthy and happy 2009.
Jan
