Having been diagnosed with a rather discriminating disease almost 2 years ago, I was so happy to be a part of a group where having P was no big deal - even if your red marks were already covering your face. I was fortunate enough to have seen an AVP segment featured in Mel and Joey regarding the disease (I think it was last March?) which featured these guys who were not afraid to face the camera despite having big red spots on their bodies. And then the name of the group struck me - Psoriasis Philippines - googled it, found the yahoo group and voila!, I was instantly in P heaven, where people you have not seen nor met welcome you with warmth and full of love and caring (parang charismatic ah!).
Last Saturday, it was my first time to attend one of the major activities organized by Psoriasis Philippines - an online support group for people who suffer from psoriasis, an auto-immune disease which manifests as lesions in the skin (either from looking like insect bites or to being worst, map-like and inflamed reddish marks all over the body) or which could also lead to painful psoriatic arthritis and even death. This event was aptly called
"Hug Me Campaign" (as featured thru GMA News) - with a press con and psor patients hugging celebs to campaign against the discrimination experienced by psor patients.
Psor patients present were all wearing shirt saying "Hug Me... I'm not contagious... Psoriasis is not Contagious" while invited guests, doctors, celebs and support people - family and friends of psor patients - were all wearing shirts with "I hugged a wonderful person with psoriasis" and gamely posed for a photo op in a makeshift photo corner done by the org's resident photo peeps from the Playground Studios.
The event also featured the launching of the
Hug Me Bears - cutie little bears which serve as tokens of appreciation for donors to the PLANET or the Psoriasis Livelihood Assistance Network, another project of PsorPhil where donations will be used to help people with P who were displaced in their jobs because of discrimination.
Celebs present were Direk Joey Reyes (yeah, from PDA hehe), Ricky Davao (tatay ni Fredo), and Bianca Lapus, who mentioned that her mother also had P. The guest of honor was Sec. Francisco Duque of DOH, who mentioned that, as current President of PhilHealth he would look into the possibility of providing a medical package for Psor patients (much to the delight of the people across the room) and also DOH looking into how it could help P patients. Let's just cross our fingers and hope that these ideas would be enacted to help us - especially in addressing the issue of the rather expensive medications we have to put up with to relieve us of some of the physical and painful aspects of the disease.
I saw some familiar faces I've met during an EB in Trinoma who met me with warm and friendly hugs and hellos and also those whom I've had a chance to talk to through YM conferences and saw pics of through their blogs. Going into a PsorPhil activity would really make you feel like you're as normal as the next person beside you (well, yeah, the peeps with me then all have P).
Later on, we dropped by Broadway Studio to have some photo ops with guests and celebs at the taping of Walang Tulugan (Master Showman) - with Kuh Ledesma, Christian Baustista, Karylle, Gian Carlos, Mariz, Shirley Fuentes, Kuya Germs himself, Maverick (of Ariel and Maverick) gamely posing and hugging PsorPhil members in front of our baon na cameras.
To cap the day off, Sir Joseph, or BB (big bro) as we fondly call him - PsorPhil's founder and CEO, gave us a nice dinner treat at the resto beside Broadway where around 40 of us made merriment and music (belters mga utaw ng PsorPhil!) and just enjoyed one of the blissful days where we could hang out, have fun and enjoy our evening like how some of us used to do back in the days where our skin was still clear and felt "belong" in a group :)
