While the McCain campaign has been busy promoting its invisible issues campaign this past week, the patient advocacy community has been promoting awareness of chronic invisible illnesses. Invisible illnesses are real diseases that impact the lives of the sufferer and their families but are not readily apparent to other people. Since the diseases are not readily apparent, they get insufficient attention from the medical community and are often dismissed by non-sufferers as being in the patient's head.
Some of the diseases that fall in this category are Lupus, MS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and, the condition that affects my life most directly, Migraine Disease. I am not a sufferer, but my wife is.
More after the fold:
Megan had her first Migraine attack as a teenager, but until she developed an allergy to over-the-counter pain medications a few years ago, the disease never had a major impact on her life. Since then the frequency of migraines has increased forcing major changes in her life as well as that of our children and myself. She's had to significantly rearrange her career in order to be able to deal with the unpredictability of her health. Countless family and social events have been missed or rescheduled because of a Migraine attack. And since she is the one person in this family who has any claim to organization, our household is constantly descending into chaos.
Some facts about Migraines:
- They are not related to common headaches but are in fact a neurological malfunction similar in nature to an epileptic seizure.
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It can be fatal. If Migraines last more than three days, the sufferer needs to go to the emergency room because the likelihood of stroke.
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Migraine Disease affects a large portion of the population, but like many neglected diseases it disproportionately affects women. Twelve percent of the population as a whole has Migraine Disease; but women suffer from the disease three times more often than men.
To find out more about Migraine Disease go visit the site of the premiere Migraine patient advocate Teri Roberts at My Migraine Connection
My wife also blogs about her condition at Free My Brain from Migraine Pain. I can say without bragging that it is well written and funny.
To learn more about chronic invisible illnesses go to http://www.invisibleillnessconferenc...