I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!   I have been trying to relax when I’m not working as I was exhausted by the time our June event happened – a good exhausted, I LOVED working with everyone on the Ostomy Toronto – IBM Celebration of Service Project to “Reinvent Ostomy Toronto.”   If you weren’t there, you missed an incredible night June 15. I had hoped to have a report in this issue of our newsletter, but a tight deadline and vacations has made that not possible. Until we can get a full report up on our website and in the newsletter, you can read my speeches and event reflections nd other details including Kaitlyn O’Brien’s amazing speech and poem that was a highlight of the night on my blog – http://muggins7.wordpresss.com. Both Kaitlyn and Aaron Wolkoff did great jobs of telling how they embrace life with an ostomy, Kaitlyn even got a standing ovation! We also issued a joint Ostomy Toronto-IBM Press Release, photos from our event were in the IBM Corporate Press release - one of a handful out of 5,000 projects selected and we had a story about our project on the IBM intranet. This was an amazing opportunity for Ostomy Toronto both in terms of the work done and the awareness raised of ostomies simply by this project being mentioned so many times as part of IBM’s Centennial. 

As I write this, I am Reno, Nevada at the United Ostomy Associations of America Conference. I am happy to be reuniting with friends and learning new things, but my main purpose here is to promote the 2012 UOAC conference that we will be hosting in Toronto from August 15-18 next year with a theme of “Caring in a Changing World.”    We have 15 Canadians here – I will be working at the UOAC booth with Janet Paquet, UOAC VP and Lisa Gausman, Editor, Ostomy Canada. 

Today I attended a most informative session on the TSA & the Ostomate. I went through my first airport pat-down in San Franscisco and while it was very through, it was no big deal. The pat down was done in a respectful manner, being careful of my stomach, by a young woman and her supervisor who said they got a lot of people with ostomies coming through. Tonight we have an ostomy fashion show and Lisa and Janet will be modeling in it.

I’m travelling for 16 days. After Reno I will be in Calgary a week and am excited to spend a day at the Canadian Ostomy Youth camp! Kaitlyn has promised to give me the grand tour. I am looking forward to meeting all of the campers Ostomy Toronto sponsored this year. We will be inviting them to one of our meetings this Fall. After Calgary, I am traveling to Saskatoon for their chapter information session and the UOAC AGM where I will be stepping onto the UOAC board of directors.

Summer is usually quiet for Ostomy Toronto but this year we had a board meeting in July, we were getting ready for Reno and discussing next year’s UOAC conference. We are also working to get some committees running and will be looking for volunteers to serve on these committees. We will be discussing our plans for the year in September. Thanks to our event and activities on Facebook, I am expecting a number of new members to be joining us.

I need to thank all of the sponsors for our June event. Shoppers Home Health Care paid for all of our printing, we received an IBM Community Grant for $1500 in honour of the work done by our IBM volunteers. I want to thank IBM Corporate Citizenship for the grant and also making this amazing project possible. The event costs were covered thanks to Dr Zane Cohen and Mt Sinai Hospital, Alba Medical, Coloplast, ConvaTec, Hollister and Starkmans. I also need to thank my amazing team of IBM volunteers – Stephen Burns, Paul Keeling, Carolyn Knott, Angela Lee, Tanya Liblik, Dawn Raider-Kaplansky and Laeeq Sameer as well as our speakers – Dr Robert Maunder from Mt Sinai, Karen Bruton, CAET President, Les Kehoe, Kaitlyn O’Brien and Aaron Wolkoff.

Our September meeting will be a RAP session – these are always very informative and well attended, I look forward to seeing everyone there. Have a great rest of the summer!

Mary