The dreams of our fathers

I know, I promised to update about the court case and I didn't. Well, all is well. The kid is offically mine (I have primary physical custody) and he has reasonable visitation. I'm a smidge irritated by the fact that it cost all that money to get him to agree to what I told him in Sept/Oct of last year. I am not sure what the point of all that was.
So let's see, I've talked politics and religion and Lost here, let's talk about something else close to my heart, Fibromyalgia. Though God knows I wish it wasn't close to my heart. I've had the bitch that is Fibro for almost 4 years now, and been diagnosed for about 2.
Fibro is a chronic pain disorder, and though current thinking places it as a immuno-neuolgic disorder no one really knows what causes it. It results in nerve pain, all over. Seriously, all freaking over. Each person reacts differently to it. Some people are rarely bothered, some people function with meds and have bad bad days but in general are OK (me), and some people are bed-ridden. It really runs the gamut.
Like most of these stupid chronic pain disorders you don't see anything wrong with me. I'm in pain, you don't see it. It's hard to approach a disease that way (my mother one time told me how terrible it would be if I were "really" sick. Ummm, gee thanks mom! Yep, I'm making it up!)
Anyway... recently Fibro has risen into the public's view, and now we have drugs for it and commercials advertising those drugs. Commercials that feature older women bitching about how they hurt. Umm, I'm 31. Most people with Fibro are young, it strikes between 18-35 regularly, though of course there are the oddballs outside of that age group. It almost never strikes after menopause. Most people with Fibro are women. One of the few common factors with Fibro is that it seems to occur after a trauma, I found myself with it after being preggers. If you have it, chances are a close relative has it too. You also probably have some kind of anxiety disorder.
There are a lot of things that aren't understood about Fibro, but slowly people are learning more. We now know that people with it seem to carry a high level of bacteria in their body, well past normal. We know that it is closely related to chronic fatigue syndrome, so close that people think they are the same disorder just manifesting different symptoms. But there is no standard treatement, and that makes it a hard disease.
So if you know someone who has it? Hey, be nice to them when they seem to move slowly, they go home early, or they seem a bit out of it. OK?