By Steve Mallory

Spring is here and in full swing! It has been a pretty good month with lots activity.

The first thing I want to talk about is stroke awareness. We have been selling the stroke awareness bracelets for about three months and have sold close to 200 orders. That equates to selling nearly 5000 individual bracelets! We are still selling them if you want to order bracelets. I think we have brought a nice bit of awareness to our society about stroke. Thank you all for participating and thanks for your patience while we sorted out our temporary mess! I can say with confidence that every single order that we had has been shipped. Orders are back to our initial statement of only taking about 10 days until you will receive your bracelets. You can place your order at http://www.strokenetstore.net.

The next item to discuss is when the T-shirts will be available. I received notice from the new store manager, Brice Black, that T-shirts will be available on June 14^th! Brice owns the shop where the T-shirts will be made so his information is definitely credible. The shirts are light teal and have an embroidered stroke awareness patch on the front and our logo and the web address silk screened on the back. T-shirts will go on sale at the store around that same date so mark your calendars. I will send out a mass e-mail to let everybody know. T-shirts will cost somewhere between $15 and $20, plus shipping. I did some price comparisons and this is definitely the lowest deal I could find. Sorry that the shirts are not less expensive but I can almost guarantee that the quality of the shirts is worth it!

A third item already added to our store is the 5^th Annual Golf Tournament Fundraiser! It’s the time of the year when some members of the Board of Directors meet and discuss how our fundraiser will be managed. We decided that any member of our organization who lives in Maryland, or in close proximity, is invited for the after the tournament dinner. The dinner is always excellent and will be available for free to members of the Stroke Network. Just let me know. The tournament is being held on Friday, September 8^th.

The moderated chat we held on May 24^th was another success. Unfortunately, the final for American Idol was held on the same night so we did not have the turn out that I expected. When I look at the subject content and the information that will be available to our members I am definitely pleased. Lin is providing a review of the session and is making a link available to the transcripts in her article in the newsletter. I want to thank our guest speaker, Peter Sidorenko, and the other staff of SCTI for working on the presentation and making themselves available for the presentation.

Stem cell therapy is going to be the way of the future for recovery from a stroke. I have added a new forum on the message board so that our members can find out more how they might become potential patients for the treatment. Use this forum for your personal beginning to see how stem cell therapy might benefit you. Ask questions and provide feedback about your experience. We can all have a positive experience from asking the right questions. Just think, if we work together to make this a successful treatment overseas it will eventually become available in Mexico and finally the United States. Members have been asking me for years if there is recovery from stroke and it now seems like I can legitimately say, yes! I am not only thinking about us, right now, but actually I am more interested in what will potentially be available to our children. Stem cell therapy is the way of treating stem in the future and we need to make things happen by getting involved, now! It would be so cool if someone from our very own organization received this treatment and then reported back on their improvement!

If you have not been to the message board lately you will see that there is now a forum for the brainstem stroke survivor. I had this type of stroke myself and being able to make a connection with somebody else who had this rare type of stroke was amazing. We compare our physical deficits and pass on tips. If you have a brainstem stroke you definitely will want to come and visit the message board and introduce yourself.

The last item I want to discuss, send Lin your photo and a brief bio about what happened to you with your stroke. We will feature you in an upcoming issue of the StrokeNet Newsletter.