Aug 2002 Organization Highlights

Organization Highlights

By Steve Mallory

q July has been a very good month for our organization. I am extremely happy with the decision to purchase the chat room and site search services for the organization. The only remaining free service, with advertisements, is the existing message board and our new one by Friday will replace that. I am looking forward to our new look and the improvements that it makes to our web site. We finally will be totally in full control of our site content and completely free of any advertisements, we will truly be operating as a non-profit organization.

q July was also nice in the fact that we received several donations. We are now guaranteed to be totally on our own. My wife is happier than I am. This will be the first year in many that we haven’t had to use personal funds to keep things going. She is already out buying new furniture for our house, LOL.

q Seriously, I say that because I want everybody to know that life can get back to some normalcy after having a stroke. Things are far from being back to the way that things were but seeing my wife finding time to go out, do some serious shopping and then actually making a purchase and being excited about it is something that I haven’t seen for quite some time. My message here is to be patient if you have had your stroke within just the past few years. If you can really accept your new life and don’t give up trying to get better your recovery will be sooner and happen faster. I usually don’t preach too much to the organization but I think that it cannot hurt to encourage hope for the future.

q How the donations came about, partially, are that my local newspaper contacted me and ran a two-page article about our organization and me. I spoke about our organization through a good deal of the article. Several people from my county e-mailed me and asked about our organization. I hope that something like this can be your incentive to get in touch with your local media and let them know how the Internet and finding an on-line stroke support group has helped you. It’s a really good way to let your community know that there is a place for stroke support and information on stroke if you cannot get out to access something where you live. The newspaper was fascinated and grateful to know that this service is available for free and available 24/7. Once the news got out the donations started coming in. Please consider doing what you can to help this organization out. You will feel so good when you hear from someone across town that is eager to hear that support is finally available to them.

The Stroke Network, Inc.

P.O. Box 492 Abingdon, Maryland 21009