Workwell Foundation

Would you please join me in raising funds for Workwell Foundation - one of my favorite research organizations serving people with ME/CFS? 

Workwell Foundation had an enormous impact on my life in 2021. It had been more than a year since I became too sick to work, go to church, or socialize with friends. I was often unable to leave the house or keep up with even the most simple of tasks at home. Yet despite having seen nearly a dozen different health professionals and having been subjected to countless tests, I still lacked hard clinical evidence of my disability.

I was far from alone. Many people with chronic “invisible illnesses” struggle to prove their disability to insurance companies and government programs, because traditional tests simply do not capture the dysfunction occurring within our bodies. Workwell’s 2-day cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) is one of the few options available that can provide unique clinical evidence of disability in people with ME/CFS.

I cried the day I received my report—partly in relief (finally! I had proof for others!) and partly in sorrow as I read just how poorly my body was functioning (even worse than I’d thought). Additionally, after searching for help for more than eighteen months, at last I held in my hands guidelines that accurately outlined what my body could and could not tolerate. It was priceless.

Besides providing disability testing, Workwell provides patient-centered resources on pacing (critical in the management of ME/CFS) and conducts research that benefits the medical community, patients, and policy makers. For example, its research recently played a significant role in eliminating graded exercise therapy (GET) from recommended treatment options for ME/CFS. (If you didn’t know, this was a massive win for ME/CFS patients and advocates. GET can be extremely harmful to individuals with ME/CFS, but was tragically promoted for decades as a primary ME/CFS form of treatment.)

Workwell has been in the trenches advocating for patients for over two decades and is committed to finding new ways to help people with ME/CFS—and now, also those with long COVID.

Will you help me raise money for this important organization? You can follow Workwell Foundation on social media to see your donation dollars at work.