Pain and CMT - two web sites

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http://www.ninds.nih.gov/patients/disorder/chrpain/chronic%2Dpain.htm

This is an article about chronic pain, (which is what many CMTers have, but

this article is about chronic pain in general, NOT specifically CMT pain).

It starts out:

Introduction

What was the worst pain you can remember? Was it the time you scratched the

cornea of your eye? Was it a kidney stone? Childbirth? Rare is the person who

has not experienced some beyond-belief episode of pain and misery.

Mercifully, relief finally came. Your eye healed, the stone was passed, the

baby born. In each of those cases pain flared up in response to a known

cause. With treatment, or with the body's healing powers alone, you got

better and the pain went away. Doctors call that kind of pain acute pain. It

is a normal sensation triggered in the nervous system to alert you to

possible injury and the need to take care of yourself.

Chronic pain is different. Chronic pain persists. Fiendishly, uselessly, pain

signals keep firing in the nervous system for weeks, months, even years.

There may have been an initial mishap—a sprained back, a serious

infection—from which you've long since recovered. There may be an ongoing

cause of pain—arthritis, cancer, ear infection. But some people suffer

chronic pain in the absence of any past injury or evidence of body damage.

Whatever the cause, chronic pain is real, unremitting, and demoralizing—the

kind of pain New England poet Dickinson had in mind when she wrote:

Pain—has an Element of Blank—

It cannot recollect

When it begun—or if there were

A time when it was not

There is a lot more to this article.

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You may order an article that is just about CMT pain from Crabtree at

CMTInternational, (cmtint@...) or look at the CMT Pain website:

http://www.archives-pmr.org/abs79_12/v79n12p1560.html " >PAIN IN

CHARCOT-MARIE-TOOTH DISEASE

http://www.archives-pmr.org/abs79_12/v79n12p1560.html

This one is not about treatment, but it verifies that CMT pain exists, for

the edification of physicians and neurologists who deny CMT can cause pain.

The full article is about 4 pages long. The web site is a summary.

Even printing out the web page may help your nay-saying physician believe

that CMT is associated with chronic pain.

Kat in Seattle