This has truly been a mind-expanding week.

Attending the EASL Monothematic PBC Conference was an incredible experience.  Much of the credit for the success of this conference belongs to the researchers and clinicians at the University of Newcastle Medical School and the dedicated members of the Liver North patient support group who have done so much to make their research successful.  The collaboration of these patients, doctors and scientists is a model for the type of patient-professional relationship we need to find a cure for PBC.

I am still mentally digesting all of the information I have been exposed to since last Sunday, still reading and rereading the abstracts, still collecting material from presenters, still making notes and attempting to organize my thoughts regarding everything that needs to be shared and the best way to share every bit of it.

I plan to break this information up into separate articles based upon the topic and technical difficulty of the material. I hope to begin posting these articles in the next week or so.  Since some of my material will need fact-checking before I post it, I ask everyone’s patience as I get this process started since in addition to this being the holiday season, I am also participating in a wedding less than two weeks away.

An opinion -- I think more PBC patients should attend professional conferences in the future.  Some attendees need reminding that real lives are at stake.  While many of the conference participants are in clinical practice and familiar with the full spectrum of problems plaguing us, there were also a number of scientists there who seemed to be uncomfortable being in close proximity to people suffering from the same disease as their lab animals.  (I am probably being grossly unfair and this impression may be entirely the fault of my imagination working overtime.)

I had the great pleasure of meeting several other PBC patients at the conference.  Tillie Hale is the driving force behind the Liver North group.  With Tillie's passion to find a cure for PBC and her enthusiasm, these PBC patients from the area surrounding Newcastle have been the willing subjects of many a research project for the benefit of all.  I also enjoyed many hours in the company of Marian Power and Grainne Nic, who came from Ireland to attend the conference.

If other PBC patients were at the conference, I regret that I did not have the opportunity to meet them as well.