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Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME / CFS) Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS), Fibromyalgia Leading Research. Delivering Hope.Open Medicine Foundation® Canada

Driving research of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME / CFS),
Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS), Fibromyalgia and Long COVID.

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#TripleGivingTuesday Community Spotlight

An Interview with Artist & ME/CFS Advocate, Christina Baltais

As part of Triple Giving Tuesday, Open Medicine Foundation Canada (OMFCA) is honored to share our Community Spotlight on artist and ME/CFS advocate Christina Baltais.

Christina’s profoundly compassionate and moving artwork uses diverse mediums, including painting, collage, photography, writing, and art videos. A resident of Toronto, Ontario, Christina’s art is directly inspired by her experiences living with ME/CFS for the past 15 years. Her goal is to bring comfort and healing to others who live with this disease and to those that can relate to its themes.

Starting October 29, 2020, through International Giving Tuesday on December 1, 2020, Christina will generously donate a portion of proceeds from sales of her original artwork to OMF and OMFCA, where it will be triple matched! Check out Christina’s online art shop now. Every piece you purchase from now until December 1 directly supports groundbreaking OMF funded research into ME/CFS.

OMF had the exciting opportunity to get an exclusive interview with Christina about her art, advocacy work, and life with ME/CFS.

What does your daily life look like with ME/CFS? 

I have mild ME/CFS, which feels like a complete understatement considering how sick I am. For me, daily life is quite variable depending on things like sleep, if I’ve been pacing, and any external life stressors. On a good day, I can create some art, meet up with a friend/family, or have an outing. On a bad day, l am confined to my couch because I don’t have the physical or mental capacity to function due to symptoms like vertigo, brain fog, and an overall heaviness that permeates my entire body — just to name a few.

How did your interest in art begin?

I was a very creative child, and my interest in art began there. I attended Etobicoke School of the Arts when I was in high school, which offered an incredible opportunity to explore visual arts while also going to school. I then veered towards the sciences and studied Nutrition and Naturopathic Medicine. I came down with ME/CFS when I was 20 years old. For the next ten years, I struggled but managed to complete my undergraduate degree (Nutritional and Nutraceutical Sciences) and then nearly finish my ND (Naturopathic Doctor) degree. My health was a constant struggle, and studying was only possible with the help of a lot of accommodations. I kept finding that whenever my ME/CFS flared up, I always fell back into art to process what I was experiencing.

What type of art do you create, and what inspires you to make it?

I’d say my art can be quite variable, but lately, I’ve been exploring collage art and portrait photography. I find collage art less energy-intensive than painting, so it’s been a more accessible art form for me these days. I feel compelled to create art about my experiences with ME/CFS because I want others to understand what our community is going through. The most painful and vulnerable parts of this disease have inspired a lot of my work.

Do you think that your artwork has helped you to represent your experiences living with ME/CFS and express your feelings?

Yes, most definitely. I use art as the main vehicle for my voice because I believe it can capture a moment or a feeling, often better than words. A visual image about grief, isolation, resilience, etc. can speak a thousand words and invoke a feeling in the viewer that I hope they can relate to as someone with ME/CFS or as someone who feels that as part of the human experience.

Has your artistic work helped you to cope with ME/CFS? If so, in what ways has it helped?

It’s helped me release a lot of the shame I felt from the stigma surrounding ME/CFS, which I’d been carrying for a long time. When I started putting my art on social media, I began connecting to this sea of people I could relate to, and who could relate to me.

This incredible community is what has helped me cope more than anything — and I wish I had found it sooner. My future and the future of millions depend on advances in research. When my health permits it, I create artwork focused on my experiences living with this disease; to play my part in raising awareness for ME health equality.

Please check out Christina’s website, online store, or follow her on Instagram. And when you purchase Christina’s artwork during Triple Giving Tuesday, she will donate a percentage of the proceeds directly to OMFCA!

When you donate to OMFCA any day of the week, your gift will be triple matched. Please amplify Christina’s message of hope by donating generously today:

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Microvesicles and viral sequencing
Microvesicles are a type of extracellular vesicle that is released from the cell membrane. Vesicles are small, fluid-filled sacs or vacuoles within the body. Sequencing is a technique used to determine the exact sequence of bases (A, C, G, and T) in a DNA (or viral) molecule.
NMR Metabolomics
NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) is an instrument/tool used to perform metabolic studies, metabolic profiling, and metabolomics in biofluids and tissues for more than 40 years using magnetic fields. There is a very close connection between metabolic measurements and NMR. This connection has flourished because of NMR’s many unique strengths for characterizing complex mixtures’ chemical composition.
Proteomics
The large-scale study of proteins, which are large, complex molecules that are required for structure, function, and regulation of the human body's tissues and organs.
Immune cell profiling
The immune system has many important regulatory roles in disease development and progression. Given the emergence of effective immune therapies, reliable predictors of response are needed. Immune cell profiling determines response by evaluating immune cell populations from treated and untreated samples. For our purposes, we will evaluate the white blood cell response to the viral infection using a process called “Cytof.”
Leukocyte Genomics
A leukocyte is a colorless cell circulating in the blood and body fluids and is involved in counteracting foreign substances and disease. A genome is all genetic material of an organism. Genomics is a biology field focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. Therefore, leukocyte genomics is the study of all genetic material of leukocytes.
Metabolomics
Metabolomics is a way to study metabolism – that is, through measuring amounts of the metabolites (small molecules) produced by our bodies as we convert food into energy and other molecules that our cells need to survive. Metabolomics technology is ‘large-scale,’ meaning that several thousand metabolites can be measured from a single sample of e.g., blood or urine.
Micro RNA
Cells use Micro RNA to control whether a particular gene is making too much, too little or the normal amount of its protein at a particular time.
Autoantibodies
Antibodies that react with self-molecules and that occur in healthy individuals and are referred to as natural antibodies or autoantibodies.
Extracellular DNA for viral reactivation and Mitochondrial DNA
exDNA (extracellular DNA), exDNA is often secreted actively and is used to perform several tasks, thereby offering an attractive target or tool for biotechnological, medical, environmental, and general microbiological applications. Viruses are intracellular parasites that rely to a significant extent on the host cell for replication. Viral reactivation occurs when an active replication of the viral genome results in a lytic (degradation of the cell) infection characterized by the release of new progeny (descendant) virus particles.