On Saturday 12th May I presented to a room of delegates at Cybher and was not even there. Go technology. Go amazing co workers.

Last September I was introduced by a mutual friend to the lovely Sian To, who was organising the first ever all inclusive women’s blogging and social media conference - Cybher.

Sian asked me to do a session at Cybher. I said no, I couldn’t, as back then I had started my Zoladex treatment and felt more than ever that I could not commit to an event without the very real possibility of pain being too bad to cancel.  As the months rolled on, I wanted more and more to be involved and could see what a wonderful event it was going to be.

I spoke to Sian, who, by this time I had begun a mutual admiration cyber relationship and felt able to be honest. I know that Sian “gets” pain, she lives with it daily as she has leg and spinal injuries. I knew she knew how much I wanted to be involved, and that  Iwould do all I could to be there.

Amazingly, she said just go for it, say yes to a session, and we will deal with it if you can’t be there.  Sian is the latest in a line of amazing people I am lucky enough to be working with who don’t judge, who support me, who just GET IT.

So, I accepted and was announced as a speaker.

My pain this last fortnight has been terrible. By Wednesday last week I realised the chances of me being at Cybher had gone from 50/50 to 20/80, so I let the team know. The Cyber girls were amazing, and totally supported me decision. After playing with the idea of me Skype presenting the session, we landed on the solution of pre-recording a screen cast of my workshop, with a Skype live link up intro from me.

So, on the day I was at home, set up with full make up and a fancy outfit etc to address my room of delegates, waiting for the go ahead from London. In the event, we didn’t Skype as the session before had run late so time was short and I was introduced by the lovely Erica  of Punch Comms and away the screencast went. I was live tweeting throughout the session, following the dialogue at home through the #dexdivacybher and amazed to see instagram images of the event fly past in a flurry of tweets of people enjoying my workshop.

I was thrilled to be involved and the support from the Cybher team is testament to the fact that chronic illness need not hold you back from presenting to a room full of people at at conference. I obviously would have dearly loved to be there in person, and next year I hope I will be able to.

Here is the Vimeo link of my session:

http://vimeo.com/41990454

Thanks to Sian, to Cybher, to my attendees for coming to my workshop and for technology for making us endo sisters able to get involved still.

Here’s to Cybher 2013…