Dale... you beat me to the punch... here is my welcome post....
I’d just like to extend a very warm welcome to the flood of new members coming to iSpine. If you are not part of the flood… OK a warm welcome for you as well.
My name is Mark Mintzer and I’m the founder of iSpine; a non-profit organization dedicated to providing quality information and a supportive environment on the International Spine Patient Information Network. I started my ‘career’ as an internet spine patient in 2000. I was 3 years into spinepatienthood (following a bad auto accident in 1997) and was about to have a 2-level 360 lumbar fusion. That would have been my second spine surgery, but fortunately, I discovered the MGH Braintalk
Spinal Disorders Forum and became a fixture there, making literally thousands of posts over the years to come. I still post there, but after a string of technical problems, they don’t have the traffic that they used to. (Yes, you can post links to other forums here. Our purpose is to share information, not limit it.)
In early 2003, I recognized the need for a more targeted forum for people who were researching the new technologies. I began the first iteration of this community that was the Yahoo eGroup for ADR_Patients. This was very successful, but the email eGroup did not lend itself well to the types of discussions we were having. This community that was built with the generous sharing of information by a few dozen patients eventually moved over to the ADR/Spinal Tech Talk forum at BPSG. After a year and a half, we moved the community over to ADR Support. I think that Justin (Dr. J) was the first to be banned from BPSG. Harrison, Alastair and I, along with Justin, were the band of 4 forum leaders and soon we were all banned. Shortly after that, anyone who said anything nice about me or mentioned the new forum was banned, and we were joined at ADR Support by dozens of the old crew. (Sound familiar?)
The “banned of 4” moved the community over to ADR Support in December of 2004 and again, we all worked very hard to build the community into the best place on the internet for the new technology information seekers. By this time, I had taken 2 trips to Europe AFTER my surgery and had observed surgery at Stenum, AlphaKlnik, St. Elisabeth, St. Wolfgangs, and Rudolphinerhaus, in addition to several centers in the US. I had already begun traveling with patients for their spine surgery. (Next week, I’ll take my 27th trip to Europe and have now done this with > 50 patients.) I’ve now observed > 200 spine surgeries of all different kinds, have attended dozens of conferences and classes, and have a unique body of experience that makes my input valuable to my clients, and to the online patient community as well. Unfortunately, this experience was deemed to be at odds with the goals of ADR Support and in March of 2006, I was banned. The process was pretty outrageous and many things that were just flat-out untrue were said. An email was sent to all ADR Support members stating, “We believe that clearly separating commercial contacts is the best way to provide transparency within the Forum, as well as clarity and freedom of choice to each individual member.”
I continued to amass volumes of useful information as I attended more conferences, classes and was taking 6 trips each year to Germany for dozens of surgeries. I decided to start a new forum where people could post without fear of being banned. It was apropos to start on September 19th, please read my
initial welcome thread. It makes me very proud to spend time in the OR with pioneers of the industry like Bertagnoli, Zeegers, Buettner-Janz, Delamarter, Regan, Yue, Bitan, Yeung, Hoogland, Schiffer and others.
Here on iSpine, you do have a choice. If you feel that there is a conflict between my status as a professional advocate for spine patients, then please feel free to ignore my posts. However, if you feel that the information I post is useful and informative; or even if you think my posts are a load of crap… you can also choose to read them, challenge them. You can even tell me that it’s BS. You can agree, defend, disagree with anyone... just be civil. The one cardinal rule that I insist on is that we all post for the benefit of the patient community. If you have a good experience, share it. If you have a bad experience, share it.
>> There is no entity that is the arbiter of correct and incorrect information. You may disagree to your heart’s content. It is up to the reader to determine the value of the information presented by all members.
>> I will NEVER read your private messages, unless they are sent specifically to me. Surreptitiously reading other people’s communication is just wrong.
>> I will NEVER edit a post, then edit the database to cover tracks. That is just wrong. Transparency is not just a word to bat about... it's a way of approaching one's resoponsibility to those we serve.
This is a tough community. Many of us are in chronic pain, on huge doses of medications, severely depressed and literally have our lives crumbling around us. (These are the folks that are doing well… the severe patients are much worse! … OK, bad joke.) It is not possible to have ANY type of community without occasional dust-up and hurt feelings. Our chronic pain community makes it even more difficult.
So, we’ll have our problems. I’m glad that you found us. I’m sorry about the events in our lives that brought us all here. I hope that you gain a lot of useful information, a sense of community and a ton of support from what we all do here.
Welcome!
All the best,
Mark
PS… please introduce yourself on one of the ‘new here’ threads.