January Update: Welcome to CLBDI 2021!

Hello fellow Lewy Warriors and welcome to 2021!

We hope the holidays treated you well and you find yourself safe and healthy and happy as the new year continues on. We have a bunch of announcements for you and plenty of upcoming events but first and foremost we wanted to share some great news!

We raised $1,100.00 for Lewy Body Dementia research at the Robarts Institute with our Holiday Fundraiser!!! Can you believe it?! A huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated, liked, commented or shared our posts. Thanks to the support of the community, we were able to pass our first goal of $500 and our second goal of $1000 and we think that is absolutely amazing. This money will go directly to the people fighting the good fight against LBD at the Robarts Institute.

In other wonderful news, we think that we have now surpassed (or will surpass) our original goal of $10,000.000 in total donations by the time we get our quarterly donation report. We can't officially announce the total until the end of March but we're already buzzing and when we have the official word, you can be sure we are going to celebrate! Over the next few months we have a bunch of stuff coming your way and have been busy planning more great LBD content, events and fundraisers for the rest of 2021.

In the coming weeks, we are finally going to be able to share some information on what Dr. Pasternak and his team have been working on. You will be able to learn where your donations are actually going to and what's been happening in the study of LBD at Robarts/UWO. We wanted to share this with you in advance as it is a great way to actually see and understand the difference we are making and the impact of your donations as the research team learns more about this disease. Keep checking back for more information.

On Feb 8th, the anniversary of Bob's passing, we will be posting a memorial filled with wonderful words from his friends, family and members of the community. The memorial will be posted both here in the CLBDI Blog and on our Facebook page. All are welcome to drop by, pay your respects and leave a comment.

After that, we will be gearing up for the launch of the next fundraiser and Carol's online art show "Our Emotional Journey With LBD" in late March. The art show will be featured on a new section of our website and we will have many ways for you to donate or get involved. More information is coming your way next month so be sure to check back regularly.

And finally... As we have been saying for a while... sometime in the next few months we will be launching our Youtube account as well as branching out to other social media platforms. I know that it's been taking a while... but I wanted to let everyone know why. We have experienced countless delays due to the ever changing lockdowns and restrictions in our region and the stress the pandemic has put on ourselves and our families has slowed our work flow (sometimes to a halt). There are multiple caretakers/medical professionals who are a part of CLBDI and the pandemic has been extra hard on them too so we work at the pace that best fits all of us. The main issue that we are facing now is that we haven't been able to access the proper tools to record the voice-over for our presentation both safely and professionally. Since we are all working remotely, we decided to wait until we can do things properly so that we can deliver the best quality content. We apologize for the delays but we promise it will be well worth the wait. In some ways, this was a blessing for us, as we have now had the presentation reviewed by Dr. Pasternak and can be sure that we are putting our best foot forward when we release the final project.

And, as per usual, we will be updating the "LBD Resources" page regularly and adding a new section to our booklist for dealing with stress and grief. Unfortunately, these are a natural part of the caretaker and patient's journey. We wanted to be sure to include some resources that could help out those people who may be struggling.

All the best,
Joe