The Senses

There are five classic senses most humans are blessed with. See (look), taste (eat), hear (listen), touch (feel), smell (sniff).  They are our internal physiological responses to the outside world. As a collective species we group our experiences into categories of sensory perception. If I eat moo shu pork and you eat moo shu pork chances are it will taste pretty much the same to both of us, and everyone else sharing our general circumstances. If a baby cries you and I are likely to hear a similar sound. And we will both want to do something to make it stop, for that needy wail has been carefully designed to attract attention. I can walk into a room and say, "It smells like rotten eggs!" and you can agree or disagree with some accuracy since we both have an identified scent in mind.

But there is one we are are having a very big problem with, and that is touch, or feel. A certain class of individuals are rapidly multiplying throughout the world with this same problem. Millions upon millions of people are complaining about the same feelings, experienced the same way, over and over. Allowing small variances for individually, of course. Fibromyalgia is darn near becoming an epidemic, with worldwide numbers reaching as far as 400 million people*. Yet nobody knows what medically causes it or why we are the ones to get it.

400 million people. That is a lot of people that feel what you do. Every time your body goes off half-cocked and your mind follows suite remember that there are 399,999,999 other people in the world that can kinda relate, at least on some level. They too are raising their children and working their jobs and going to school and playing with their grandchildren. Many of them push themselves to burnout, present company included. The crash of all the senses that finally takes you under, jammed up and overflowing because of all that darn pain stamped across the central nervous system. But I do believe we are getting somewhere with our awareness efforts. Every single time you open your mouth and utter the word Fibromyalgia you further this cause. And if you don't feel up to it that day, that 's okay too. But we will keep fighting, and winning, until we one day get the recognition, respect and results we deserve. Nearly 20 years since the World Health Organization recognized Fibromyalgia and gave her an individual ICD-9* code and the patients are still doing backflips to prove what they feel is real. That is simply unacceptable.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

*Fibromyalgia Syndrome UK 

*World Health Organization