Language is a difficult thing. I spend some time working on the website again yesterday, and the designer and I speak a very different language, even if it's both based on English. Web language and medical language don't have much in common. But  think we started to find a compromise, and have worked out how to refer to each webpage if I want him to change anything.  I don't say 'the page on Dupuytren's surgery' but just send him the internet link, that way we should both be talking about the same thing.

A big thank you to John who allowed me to use some of his post-surgery pictures on our site. It is always better to know what kind of wound or scar to expect, so it's not too big a shock when the bandage comes off.

Auxilium seems to have found a new European partner, a Swedish firm this time.  I had never heard about them, Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB or Sobi for short, but being Swedish they may be familiar with the condition? We'll wait and see what changes they make to the advertising and marketing of Xiapex.

Another big step forward for the website http://www.dupuytrens-society.org/index.html .

We finally have the new layout up and running, now we just need to find all the faulty links etcetera in this one, and that means going through the whole site, checking everything.. Gary has promised to make a start, and I am grateful to him.

Apart from that we have been working on sharing documents and annotations, Mendeley is a very useful program but it would seem both my and Judith's virus scanners/ firewalls have problems allowing it access all the time. So more wrinkles to iron out there. But I'm sure now my laptop is working almost normal again ( that's why I have not written a blog for a while, it suddenly kept freezing up halfway start-up, turned out the last virus scanner update had corrupted something, so it needed registry repairs and a new virus program- no more free ones for me for a while!)  we will be able to get on with our list of urgent things to do, and maybe even the less urgent or longterm plans.

Auxilium have as from May taken overmarketing Xiapex, they are the manufacturers but so far Pfizer has marketed it in Europe. So that's a big change, we said our goodbey's to our contact at Pfizer and Judith and I have already met our new contact at Auxilium when we were at the NICE meeting. We'll wait and see how good the contact will be and what they can do for Dupuytren's patients, but they seemed knowledgeable about the condition and related problems like Ledderhose, frozen shoulders, dorsal nodules, Peyronie's etc. And even about cellulite, as there is a trial using Xiapex for that. Maybe once plastic surgeons start using it the cost will come down? Wishful thinking.

Time to go and enjoy some sunshine, it is a bank-holiday weekend and my garden is crying out for some attention.

Anna

Christmas market break

We have not been able to do a hangout today because I was at the Christmas market in Manchester. Strange being there early in the morning, it was very quiet, took less than an hour to walk over the whole market. We did not drink any mulled wine as it was too early for that, so the atmosphere wasn't quite there, but I did get what I wanted - Dutch cheese, Dutch liquorice, 'pepernoten', a traditional Dutch treat for 5th December and some smoked eel ( I hope I still like it, my grandmother used to buy me that when I was a child).

So any thought of loosing weight will have to be abandoned, but as Dupuytren's is not generally said to be caused by obesity that's OK.

Not much is happening on the Dupuytren's front, we know Pfizer is loosing the right to market Xiapex next year and Auxilium will take over, but what they are planning to do no-one knows. We had good contact with Pfizer, I hope it will be the same with Auxilium.

Now it's time for some internet surfing to see if anyone produced any interesting articles this week. If I find any I'll post the link on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/britdupsoc