To all friends of the STTM forums

August 16, 2007

Dear Friends of the STTM forums,

We want to thank you so much for your patience while we took a week long break. I per­so­nally went to a reu­nion of friends I knew 10 years ago, and had SO much fun. Others wor­ked in their gar­dens, made chan­ges in their hou­ses, or just plain relaxed.

But something unex­pec­ted occu­rred during our break, and the big­gest change occu­rred in ME. Namely, it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to main­tain my two forums soon. Why? Because I’m taking on another real life job that was going to make it almost impos­si­ble to ade­qua­tely ans­wer posts. Addi­tio­nally, I have become con­cer­ned about my blood pres­sure which has risen the past few months, and knew that I HAD to make some chan­ges to lower it. But my big­gest issue was the new job and lack of time.

So, I called a pow­wow of the mode­ra­tors during our break. And to my sur­prise, I dis­co­ve­red that seve­ral others were fee­ling the pinch!! It wasn’t just me! One has a job that is tur­ning into out-of-state tra­vel; another badly wan­ted to return to a hobby that had gone by the way­side since the advent of the forums; another has a job which was requi­ring 60 hour work weeks; another is making a major move; and another would be making a move in the future.

Bot­tom line, we dis­co­ve­red that seve­ral of us had situa­tions in our lives that were going to make main­tai­ning cer­tain forums impossible.

So…a dif­fi­cult deci­sion was made that the forums which are now clo­sed, would stay clo­sed. Addi­tio­nally, it was deci­ded that since I couldn’t be as avai­la­ble because of an addi­tio­nal job, and since others were also having con­flicts, the entire STTM forums will need to cease to exist within the next week so seve­ral of us can do what we need to in our per­so­nal lives.

BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS! Debo­rah of the Gene­ral Thy­roid forum felt like she had the time and desire to create a forum on another URL — a totally sepa­rate place not affi­lia­ted with STTM, but where you can still talk patient-to-patient with others con­cer­ning everything that STTM repre­sents. She is wor­king on that as I write this. So, though this announ­ce­ment gives you the sad news that the STTM forums need to be gone so seve­ral mode­ra­tors can take care of their lives, a new one will be for­med. And I will be announ­cing it’s loca­tion to you as soon as it’s ready.

Addi­tio­nally, STTM will have a page of any and all groups and/or forums where you can go and which we think are fine pla­ces to get the patient-to-patient inte­rac­tion that you desire and bene­fit from.

So I’m sen­ding all of you my very best wishes, and I hope you will think of all of us! Stay tuned for links to where you can go. And don’t worry – you will hear from us in other pla­ces occa­sio­nally. We love all of you!

Janie