Dr. Allan Horowitz, published newspaper article, Richmond Hill Liberal, Copyright July 25, 1990
As I promised, today’s column will continue with the reprint of the letter which was written to me a few months ago by a reader who suffers from a condition known as fibrositis. For the last few weeks I have been reprinting this letter exactly as she wrote it, including the many criticisms of doctors and chiropractors and how they handle this condition.
Again, I remind you that fibrositis is a condition which causes fatigue, pain, stiffness and weakness. It causes the person to lose sleep and become depressed. This loss of sleep and depression aggravates the already existing condition.
The letter continues:
As you know this disease is of the arthritis and rheumatism family. You feel sorry when you see an arthritic. Why? Because the magic word is “see.” You can see their swollen, disfigured joints. They are visible to you and you feel sorry for that person.
What do you see in a fibrositis patient – nothing, absolutely nothing! No visible disfigurement ever shows in this illness.
I want your readers to know that they could never ever begin to imagine the level of pain suffered by a “fibro” patient – pain that is with you for 24 hours a day at times. Sometimes it’s tolerable, but most times it’s absolute hell.
For a lot of us, it is something we’ve had to learn to live with because there is no cure and no medication either. Medications are borrowed from the arthritis category and it’s hit and miss whether you find some relief.
At the same time you’d better have a cast iron stomach because your stomach can’t tolerate most of the medications and man, you’re going to try a lot of them before you find one. (I often wondered what the insurance clerks and druggists thought as time and time again I put in my prescriptions.)
Exercise and fresh air you say – definitely, but do that a little bit too much and you’ve had it. You better ready yourself mentally for the pain you’re going to have to tolerate the rest of the day. Even if it hasn’t hit you yet today, exercise just a smidgen too much, and you’ve had it. Exercise, yes indeed, but the body accepts very little. A lot less than you might think doctor.
Hot water – oh, to be able to exercise and swim in a pool of hot water, now that’s heaven. Hopefully the town will one day have an arthritic pool.
Do you know what I dream of Dr. Horowitz? Your ultrasound machine. When insurance companies won’t pay for it and funds at home are limited, that’s all you can do about it, dream.
That’s it for today folks. Next week will see the conclusion of this letter. One comment I want to make about the last sentence from today’s excerpt. Many insurance companies do pay for this type of treatment. I don’t want everyone thinking that because this lady’s insurance didn’t cover her treatment, it is not covered by insurance. Many companies do cover it, and if yours doesn’t, you should ask some questions and consider changing companies.