Join the Chronic Market Wednesday, November 10 at Solly’s Tavern on U Street for a night of trivia and philanthropy!
Solly’s will generously be donating 10 percent of its proceeds from the evening to the Chronic Market, so come and hang out, play trivia (and drink up!) for a great cause. The evening will also feature raffle too, where you will have the chance to win a $50 gift certificate from ANXO Cidery, art from Chronic Market artist Cristina Gouin, a piano lesson from the classical maestro Jamaal Davis, art from the dope NC born and bred Donnie Evans and other prizes!
Follow the Chronic Market on Instagram @chronicmarketplace and learn more about this misunderstood condition that disables millions of people worldwide.
ME/CFS often follows a viral infection and leaves 75% unable to work and 25% homebound or bedridden, some of whom are too ill to even speak or feed themselves. An estimated 15-30 million people worldwide have ME/CFS, including most recently a subset of so-called long-haul COVID patients. There is no treatment, and no definitively known cause, though study after study has shown the significant abnormalities in the immune, neurological and other symptoms compared to healthy controls.
April Thompson, the founder of the Chronic Market, developed ME/CFS nearly 15 years ago while in peak health and physical conditioning, a multi-sport athlete who had run marathons, boxed competitively, and climbed mountains all over the world. “A cold/flu virus lingered and left me so weak I couldn’t make it around the block, though just days earlier I’d been able to run miles on end. It has waxed and waned over the years, but I never fully regained my functioning,” says Thompson.
By making a purchase or donation, you are helping economically empower chronically ill individuals, helping raise awareness for a maligned and misunderstood condition, helping raise funds for critical research, and helping to get the artistic talents and stories of chronically ill artists, musicians, writers, designers and artisans shared worldwide. The website is run 100% on a volunteer basis, with a minimal percent taken from each sale to cover operating costs, with the remainder going to the creator/vendor and an additional 5% to the Open Medical Foundation, which conducts critical research from private funding on ME/CFS.
There is a huge disparity in research funding for ME/CFS. ME/CFS is more prevalent than multiple sclerosis and HIV/AIDS and more debilitating than MS, heart disease and stroke and yet the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other global health institutions have allocated scarcely any resources to investigate it. In 2020, the NIH spent a mere $13 per patient on ME/CFS research compared to $253 per MS patient, for example.
