Hello friends --Hope you all had a great week this week. I am feeling MUCH better, much stronger, so other than evacuating due to an impending Hurricane last week (missed us, whew) all is right in my world! Hope you can say the same.Here we are again: it's FRIDAY!!  And here, my friends, is your Friday Night 6-Pack: 

1. Friend of the pod Julie Roberts, country music singer/songwriter, FUMS'er and now author, released her book this week!!  You can hear her talk about the book, country music and her MS journey on Episode 15 of the FUMS Podcast Show AND here's a link to her book: Beauty in the Breakdown: Choosing to Overcome

2. MS.Newlifeoutlook.com posted an article about MS fatigue with various tips and tricks to deal with it. Do you have any to add? Here's the article: Why MS Makes You Fatigue.

3. SUPER psyched!! I've been busy booking interviews for The FUMS Podcast Show. I just booked the Senior Career Specialist and Career Coach at FlexJobs, the leading online service for professionals seeking remote, flexible schedule, part-time, and freelance jobs. This is both for FUMS'ers and for my new course "Patients Getting Paid". I want all chronically ill people to know that there are opportunities available that make sense for us - to work from where we need to, to schedule doctor's visits when necessary, to work when we are at our best - in our jammies - even from bed - whatever!! SO - what questions do you have?? I'll ask them for you! Send them to me at [email protected]. 

4. Have you ever wondered which state here in the U.S. has the highest incidence of MS? I saw a news report that says Minnesota wins that distinction! BTW - I'm originally from Minnesota!! Here's the report: Families Leaving MN After Research Shows Higher MS Rates

5. In a BIG story this week, researchers at UVA (I now live in Virginia!!) announced they found that lymphatic vessels, the “roads” that work to clear waste material from the brain, can also carry messages that direct immune system attacks against myelin, promoting the onset of multiple sclerosis (MS)!! WHAT?!?!  "While the identity of these messages remains unknown, the findings suggest that blocking these signals could help to ease or even prevent MS progression." Big news! Here's the article: UVA Article on Lymphatic Messages in the Brain

6. This one is super cool: researchers have found a way to make MS think a drug is myelin protein - and when our defective immune system goes after it, it sort of explodes and causes cell death! "What the immune cells don’t know before they engulf the myelin protein is that it has been programmed with a “death cue” that triggers apoptosis or cell death. In other words, the immune cells unwittingly gobble up the drug/myelin protein, which essentially has what [study author] Buttigieg  describes as a bomb attached to it, killing themselves."  That's some futuristic shit right there!! LOVE it!  The Trojan Horse of medicine! Here's the article: Trojan Horse Med

So that's it for this week. I hope you're finding these Friday Night 6-Packs of value. I'd really appreciate it if you'd drop me a note and let me know - yay or nay - should I continue doing them??  It's incredibly time consuming and if it's not something that you're digging - I'm out!  I really enjoy it - don't get me wrong. But if it's not something that the community finds value in - I'll move on to something else!!  Please either hit reply to this email or send me a note at [email protected].  

Have a great weekend and a great week next week.  Don't forget to meet me over in the FUMS Facebook community and let's chat!  Thanks.Warmly -- Kathy#FUMS 

Sometimes it helps the stress, just to say "F-U-M-S"