Since coming across this page http://dupuytrens.org/DupPDFs/dirlist.htm of the Dupuytren's Foundation I have spend a lot of time updating my Dupuytren's library. I now have over 1,400 articles and my personal Mendeley account is full. Fortunately they gave us a year free group account for the charity, and that contains 2 GB so far, and can go up to 100 GB so I can continue collecting for a while!

On a sad note: our chairperson Judith has decided to step down for personal reasons, so now we are down to 2 trustees. We have put feelers out to see if some of the people who helped us when we started the charity would be willing to step in, if not there will be a public appeal. For now we will wait a few weeks for any replies, but any volunteers who would like to be involved please contact us through the website or facebook.

NICE have to decided to go ahead with the appraisal of Xiapex, which means they are going to decide if it should be available on the NHS or not. So far they have not taken any of our comments or suggestions on board, but we'll keep trying. They don't expect to decide anything before 2015, so don't get excited folks! lol.

We have a beautiful picture on our website, courtesy of Megan Lindquist. Lovely cheerful waving hands. Dupuytren's patients are a good bunch.

That's it in a nutshell for our news, I will keep you all informed if anything else happens.

Oh and Wigan won the Challenge Cup! YEAH!!!

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.