Weird.
Sometimes life is just too ridiculous. I swear.
Quick backstory for those who don't know: Three people in my immediately family have been diagnosed with an intestinal disorder called Crohn's disese. I've been in a drawn out diagnostic process for the past few years which may soon render me the fourth.
Now, Gregory's ex-girlfriend has had Crohn's for a long time. She was diagnosed long before Gregory was, even (though he had been sick long before he met her). Anyway, Gregory just started dating a really cool girl named Christine. I got to meet her during choir tour...I really really like her. Apparently she's going through much the same process of gastrointestinal illness and difficulty getting diagnosed which started for me in high school. Like....almost all the exact same symptoms and everything. She even has gastroparesis like me (huge red flag for Crohn's). So Christine has joined me in what I like to call "Crohn's Limbo."
Anyway, I got to thinking. Maybe I'm not the one who cursed all the people I love...the one who turns everything she touches to crap. Maybe it's actually just Gregory.
It also got me thinking...I keep hearing about more and more people I know getting Crohn's. I feel like rates of Crohn's are just kinda.....getting out of control. For example, I've heard about at least two Cape Henry families' kids get diagnosed this year. Both were blown off by their doctors and told that they were nervous, hypochondriacs, wanting attention, or that they had IBS (boy, those sure sound familiar). One of them finally got a diagnosis and is so sick that he's in the hospital. I hope that kid's initial doctors are proud of themselves and the tremendous service rendered to their patients. Getting called crazy by your doctor is always an important step in the healing process. Ugh. Unfortunately....it is a pretty typical step in getting an autoimmune diagnosis.
I actually just started reading this book called The Autoimmune Epidemic. It's fascinating. Side note for those who don't know: autoimmune diseases are those in which the body's natural defense system attacks the body's own tissue.
Anyway, In the past forty years rates of autoimmune disease have basically doubled. And even in just the past few years they've spiked tremendously. While a small part of this may have something to do with impriving diagnostics (as someone in Crohn's Limbo, I contend that diagnostics need to improve a hell of a lot quicker), it's becoming abundantly clear that environmental toxins (in our food, in household products, etc.) are contributing to this rise.
But what really gets me is this.
The National Institutes of Health estimate up to 23.5 million Americans have an autoimmune disease (probably much higher because there are a lot of people for whom it takes over a decade or more to get diagnoses). The NIH estimate for cancer is 9 million Americans.
The NIH's budget for autoimmune disorders is some 500 million dollars. For cancer? over 5 billion dollars.
...What.
Why is there this...disease hierarchy when it comes to public awareness?
What exactly are the factors which render certain illnesses higher up in this hierarchy of social awareness? Because obviously it isn't just an issue of numbers We think of "orphan" and rare diseases as being the same thing. But that's not really true. Plenty of diseases which are by no stretch of the imagination rare get next to no funding for research (and are thus known as "orphan" diseases).
I guess I have a few theories about this, but I'm not sure if they hold up or not. They're just my own thoughts.
(i.e. One of these theories is that I think our society has a strange fascination with the potentially but not necessarily terminal...Americans seem to like the idea of "beating" an illness....but the idea of a chronic illness which will most assuredly remain active in someone's body and cause them tremendous pain in a long, drawn out process for decades to come is just kind of....sad and pathetic to us. We'd rather not think about that. This could be total crap, I don't know. It's just a social tendency I feel like I've observed.)
I'd be really interested to see if people have other thoughts on any of this.
Quick backstory for those who don't know: Three people in my immediately family have been diagnosed with an intestinal disorder called Crohn's disese. I've been in a drawn out diagnostic process for the past few years which may soon render me the fourth.
Now, Gregory's ex-girlfriend has had Crohn's for a long time. She was diagnosed long before Gregory was, even (though he had been sick long before he met her). Anyway, Gregory just started dating a really cool girl named Christine. I got to meet her during choir tour...I really really like her. Apparently she's going through much the same process of gastrointestinal illness and difficulty getting diagnosed which started for me in high school. Like....almost all the exact same symptoms and everything. She even has gastroparesis like me (huge red flag for Crohn's). So Christine has joined me in what I like to call "Crohn's Limbo."
Anyway, I got to thinking. Maybe I'm not the one who cursed all the people I love...the one who turns everything she touches to crap. Maybe it's actually just Gregory.
It also got me thinking...I keep hearing about more and more people I know getting Crohn's. I feel like rates of Crohn's are just kinda.....getting out of control. For example, I've heard about at least two Cape Henry families' kids get diagnosed this year. Both were blown off by their doctors and told that they were nervous, hypochondriacs, wanting attention, or that they had IBS (boy, those sure sound familiar). One of them finally got a diagnosis and is so sick that he's in the hospital. I hope that kid's initial doctors are proud of themselves and the tremendous service rendered to their patients. Getting called crazy by your doctor is always an important step in the healing process. Ugh. Unfortunately....it is a pretty typical step in getting an autoimmune diagnosis.
I actually just started reading this book called The Autoimmune Epidemic. It's fascinating. Side note for those who don't know: autoimmune diseases are those in which the body's natural defense system attacks the body's own tissue.
Anyway, In the past forty years rates of autoimmune disease have basically doubled. And even in just the past few years they've spiked tremendously. While a small part of this may have something to do with impriving diagnostics (as someone in Crohn's Limbo, I contend that diagnostics need to improve a hell of a lot quicker), it's becoming abundantly clear that environmental toxins (in our food, in household products, etc.) are contributing to this rise.
But what really gets me is this.
The National Institutes of Health estimate up to 23.5 million Americans have an autoimmune disease (probably much higher because there are a lot of people for whom it takes over a decade or more to get diagnoses). The NIH estimate for cancer is 9 million Americans.
The NIH's budget for autoimmune disorders is some 500 million dollars. For cancer? over 5 billion dollars.
...What.
Why is there this...disease hierarchy when it comes to public awareness?
What exactly are the factors which render certain illnesses higher up in this hierarchy of social awareness? Because obviously it isn't just an issue of numbers We think of "orphan" and rare diseases as being the same thing. But that's not really true. Plenty of diseases which are by no stretch of the imagination rare get next to no funding for research (and are thus known as "orphan" diseases).
I guess I have a few theories about this, but I'm not sure if they hold up or not. They're just my own thoughts.
(i.e. One of these theories is that I think our society has a strange fascination with the potentially but not necessarily terminal...Americans seem to like the idea of "beating" an illness....but the idea of a chronic illness which will most assuredly remain active in someone's body and cause them tremendous pain in a long, drawn out process for decades to come is just kind of....sad and pathetic to us. We'd rather not think about that. This could be total crap, I don't know. It's just a social tendency I feel like I've observed.)
I'd be really interested to see if people have other thoughts on any of this.