SUFFERING FROM HEADACHES?
I know some folks with Moebius who do; shucks, I know folks who don't have it who do too, of course.  It's an equal-opportunity pain in the neck, those headaches.  Know what?  News today indicates those flourescent lights might indeed have something to do with it:
"...a number of readers identified what they believe is another culprit [for headaches] — the fluorescent lights common in schools and other public buildings....But is it true? I asked Dr. Andrew Hershey, director of the headache center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and one of the nation’s leading experts in pediatric migraine. He says there isn’t evidence to support the common belief that all fluorescent lights contribute to headaches. However, that doesn’t mean patients are imagining things either when they complain of headache pain after being exposed to light.  “Patients with migraine are photophobic (more sensitive to light), even when they don’t have a headache, compared to non-migraineurs,” wrote Dr. Hershey in an e-mail. “Thus being exposed to bright lights (fluorescent, beach, snow, etc.) when hypersensitized (sleep deprived, menstrual period, skipping meals, having greater than one headache per week) may push the patient over the edge.”  Dr. Hershey notes that one small study suggests that a particular wavelength of light called blue light may be a greater trigger for migraines. It’s true that older fluorescent lights emitted blue light, but newer lights that most people are exposed to today emit “more diffuse light and sort of look pink-orange,” he says. However, some cars now have blue headlights which help drivers to see better but are more blinding to oncoming traffic."

MOEBIUS MOMENTS:
In previous days' posts, I've had quotes from David Roche, in which he stresses that it's understandable that people with a facial difference are nervous and frightened about speaking in public...but he urges that we need not be.  My experience suggests he's right.  Once again, as a history teacher at the college level, I began the new fall semester this week.  And once again, in the first class of every course I'm teaching, I began by talking about my Moebius Syndrome.  I didn't always do this.  In the past, I avoided it.  I thought it would be uncomfortable talking about it.  Maybe I just didn't have the guts to do it.  And I didn't know how students would react.

But I've been doing it for years now, and the reactions I've always gotten from it have only been positive.  Students do wonder about it when they encounter someone who looks different.  Who wouldn't?  But they react well when one is honest and up front about it.  And it's a way to raise awareness, to educate more people about the fact that Moebius Syndrome and facial differences exist, but they're nothing to be frightened of.  Almost no student who has taken me, and heard my spiel on Moebius, has ever heard of it before.  But now they have.  And maybe when they encounter physical differences in the future, it won't be so shocking to them...or provoke any kind of a negative reaction.  We have a great story to tell.  People want to hear it.  David Roche is right--don't be afraid.