Kellie,

Thank you for your work on behalf of those of us with autoimmune disorders.  I am in the unfortunate situation of apparently having those genes on both sides of my family, so I guess I was kind of doomed to develop at least one (or the 4 I have developed).  Once I knew the extent of what was going on with my health, I was relieved that my only child is a boy, given how predominantly autoimmune disorders tend to affect women.  I felt like at least I might not be passing all this on to him to deal with.  The joke was on me, though, as my son was diagnosed last year, at the age of 6, with type 1 diabetes which is believed to be somewhat autoimmune in nature. 

Autoimmune disorders still do not get the kind of widespread attention they should (at least one of my conditions gets a confused “what’s that?” reaction if I tell people I have it).  And I’m very grateful to see someone using the public profile they’ve been given to bring attention to them.  So, again, thank you for doing your part to help get attention for this issue.  It’s a lot more widespread than most people seem to realize.