National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week is Sept. 14-20. A free "virtual conference" with many topics of interest to people dealing with Lyme can be accessed over the internet.

This year’s National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week, starting Sept. 14, has the theme “A little hope gives a lot of help.”  Marking the event will be a virtual conference about a variety of important topics, accessible to anyone with access to the internet.

For the week of Sept. 14-18, there will be four seminars per day, at 9 a.m., 12 noon, 3 pm and 5:30 Pacific time, USA.  Each seminar will be conducted live via Blog Talk Radio for 60 minutes, with opportunities to callers to phone in questions. (Seminars will also be archived so you can listen later.)

There are 20 speakers on a wide variety of topics that should be of interest to Lyme patients (although none of the topics specifically deals with Lyme disease.)

Here are two highlights:

Finding Health Insurance Coverage with a Pre-existing Condition (Monday, Sept. 14, Noon, Pacific time ) Jennifer Jaff

Jennifer C. Jaff is an attorney who specializes in chronic illness law. She’s the founder of Advocacy for Patients with Chronic Illness, and the author of Know Your Rights: A Handbook for Patients with Chronic Illness.

(Ms. Jaff told me via email that she has helped Lyme patients file insurance appeals for long-term IV antibiotics coverage. I will be writing about her and her book in a future blog post.)

Applying and Winning Disability Assistance When You Are Chronically Ill (Friday, Sept. 18, 9 a.m. Pacific time)  Scott Davis

Scott Davis is a disability attorney who focuses on representing clients who are disabled due to chronic pain or fatigue. His website features many articles of interest to people involved in disability cases.

Other topics at the virtual conference include: parenting when chronically ill, how chronic illness affects your marriage, nutrition, simplifying housework, and managing college with a chronic illness.

You can contact this blogger at dleland@lymedisease.org.