As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I love to watch San Francisco Giants baseball as a way to relax in the evenings. During the off-season I go through withdrawal, often trolling TV channels in search of something that holds my interest.
One evening a month ago, I turned on the Channel 5 local news (a CBS affiliate), and sat bolt upright. Dr. Kim Mulvihill was doing a Health Watch segment on a study about the success of a vagus nerve stimulation device that was tested on 14 women who had “treatment resistant” fibromyalgia pain.
Whoa, fibromyalgia study results being broadcast on the local evening news? I LOVE this! The study, published in the journal “Pain Medicine” in August, described an 8-month study on 11 women who had a vagus nerve stimulation device implanted to treat their severe pain, which did not respond to “conventional” pharmacological treatments. Even though the device has some adverse effects, it may be a “useful addition” to managing fibromyalgia patients with intractable pain.
After Dr. Mulvihill described the results of the study the anchorman said,”There are a lot of people and some doctors who don’t really think it is real; that there isn’t such a thing as fibromyalgia.”
Dr. Mulvihill said, “It was a very controversial diagnosis in the 1990s. That has changed a lot now. Today most medical groups acknowledge it exists and are trying to find treatments to help these patients–it can be very debilitating. But you are right, there are still some physicians who do not recognize this as a true disease.”
Then anchorman ended by saying, “all right, hopefully they get help.”
I know this surgical procedure is not a cure for fibromyalgia, nor is it appropriate for most of us with fibromyalgia, even those of us in severe pain. But the fact that the National Institute of Health funded a study on fibromyalgia treatment, the fact that Gundren Lange PhD thought the condition important enough to conduct the study, and the fact that CBS Channel 5 (and specifically Kim Mulvihill) cared enough to cover the story and help set the record straight on fibromyalgia–makes my heart sing.
Hopefully Dr. Mulvihill’s segment will help a few of the doubting physicians rethink their position on fibromyalgia. After all, no doctor wants to be known as being behind the times. These physicians dont’ want to be thought of as holding the outdated notion that fibromyalgia doesn’t exist, and that they are not interested in helping treat their patients who have the syndrome.
I am going to send Dr. Mulvihill a thank you email right now–from all 6 million of us.