A piece of artwork that I made and sent to Dr. Sandra Carson.

I just got off of the phone with Dr. Sandra Carson from ACOG. Dr. Carson is the vice president of ACOG's education department. She told me that due to our conversation, chronic pain has been added to the list of educational objectives for the gynecologists and obstetricians in residency. This could mean a lot and it could mean nothing at all. At this point, I think, that what it means depends on us and our efforts to advocate and lobby for ourselves. She said that someone within ACOG will be assigned to work on building the curricula for the 'chronic pain' segment. I asked her if she could put me in contact with this person. I will have to inquire about this again soon. I asked her if she would like me to send her articles about the science of chronic pain and about pelvic pain. She said that I should send her a list of articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. She said that then they could contact the doctors to create the curricula. For starters, I will work on creating this list with Dr. Echenberg and with Dahri McFaline.

She recommended that we lobby the National Institutes of Health for more funding and research on pelvic pain. She said that we should direct our efforts to the National Institute of Child Health and Disease. The NICHD is one of the institutes within the NIH. It has the power to allocate money for research in pelvic pain. I asked her if she could put me in contact with someone from within the NICHD. She said that I should contact Dr. Spong.

Keeping my emotions out of this is hard. Dr. Carson was clearly oblivious to the magnitude of our plight. I have to work hard at controlling my anger and my frustration. I have to do this if I want to get anywhere.

I should consider it an accomplishment and a sign of god's grace that chronic pain was added as its own educational objective. But I know that this can mean nothing at all and that it meaning anything of significance depends entirely on my own efforts to advocate and to successfully build a movement that is dedicated to this mission.

I have the passion and I have the determination. I have to continue working towards our collective goal, believing in myself and in my fellow pain warriors.