The Fifty Factor

The ongoing journal of disability advocate, Kelly Cozzone.

My life as a Fibromyalgia adovocate has been fraught with ups and downs. It’s gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. However throughout the one idea remained. The future benefits we with Fibromyalgia will reap once the general public and medical community all get on the same page.

For some people, the idea of Fibromyalgia is a difficult concept to understand. I mean, there isn’t any definitive cause, cure, or for that matter, treatment. Add into the mix that the major medical “experts” like the CDC and the WHO, are just now coming around. They are just now beginning to recognize our disease. Once they do it will much easier to force the rest of the populace to our way of thinking.

Yes I did say force. Why force you ask? Simply speaking, if we wait for everyone to come to the conclusion those of us with Fibromyalgia already understand we’ll have to wait for many more years to come. What conclusion is that? It’s that Fibromyalgia is a real and debilitating illness. We can’t wait for people to make up their minds on their own. We have to keep pounding away at their inner instincts. While they will say “It’s hard for me to understand how sick you are when you look fine”, our response needs to be, “It’s hard for me to understand how I can hurt so very bad and no one can figure out how to treat FMS effectively”.

 

So how do we force them? Through education both regarding the medical and the financial burdens FMS creates we can and will reach them. It’s just not something that will happen once. It needs to be done over and over again. Until they finally get it. They will come to understand. It’s happening all over the world. Ten years ago the idea of a FMS commercial running on television was unheard of and yet it happened.

Twenty years ago breast cancer was the silent killer. It handed down the death sentence to the majority of women who were diagnosed with it. Yet now, women can and do survive this terrible cancer. The same can be said of Polio and AIDS. Both were automatic death sentences. They were diseases that killed. Now through vaccinations for Polio and a cocktail of meds for AIDS, neither one are guaranteed to be terminal any longer.

How do I educate the people around me? You can teach them through many different avenues. You can use pieces of literature like the “Spoon Theory”. You can simply talk to them. Explain your symptoms. Disclose your trials with finding the right doctor or the right treatment plan. List all the different medications you’ve tried, including the ones that did not work. Just by talking aloud, by letting them see the struggles you’ve faced is a huge step in the right direction for those “uneducated” about Fibromyalgia.

By doing this, you’ve also just joined me as a Fibromyalgia Advocate. While I take it one step further, advocacy is advocacy. You educate one person, then they educate another and before you know it 50 people now understand the basics of this often misunderstood illness.

In one year, think how many people those 50 can teach about Fibromyalgia.

Next time I’ll venture into my world of political advocacy and explain a little more about the “next” step. Until then, live life with hope and faith.