This is OFFICIAL SITE, while problems with the previous site are resolved. The material is not as current, but the majority of information is available. |
|
This site is subject to change and update
at a moment's notice or on |
|
Dercum's
Disease
also known as
Adiposis Dolorosa or Dercum Syndrome
Talk about this disease online with others who have it. Join the chat
at a NEW place every Tuesday at 7 p.m. PDST
(or 10 p.m. EDST) at Dercum Chat on Homestead
"Evidently the disease is not simple obesity. If so, how are we to dispose of the nervous elements present? Equally plain is it there we have not myxoedema to deal with. ... It would seem, then, that we have here to deal with a connective-tissue dystrophy, a fatty metamorphosis of various stages of completeness, occurring in separate regions, or at best unevenly distributed and associated with symptoms suggestive of an irregular and fugitive irritation of the nerve-trunks possibly a neuritis Inasmuch as fatty swelling and pain are the most prominent features of the disease, I propose for it the name Adiposis Dolorosa." [From: Dercum FX. A subcutaneous connective-tissue dystrophy of the arms and back, associated with symptoms resembling myxoedema. University Medical Magazine Philadelphia, 1888; 1:140-150.]
What is it?
Imagine, if you will, that you are a healthy woman (but not meaning to exclude men) going about your daily life, doing what we all do, performing our jobs, chores and everything else that makes for an active and enjoyable life. Then one day, lumps start to appear for no apparent reason. Or perhaps lumps you have had for some time start to grow and become uncomfortable. Then pain and discomfort starts in the general vicinity of those lumps. You start to really get concerned. Are they cancer? What's going on?
Being a responsible person, and knowing and believing the value of early detection in any disease, you head off to the doctor. Because the lumps and pains first appeared in the abdominal region, the consensus is that it's a gastro-intestinal problem. So you are poked and prodded and tubes are shoved into openings from your mouth to your anus, searching for the cause - polyps, tumors, cancer. And nothing is found.
That specialist can't help you, and you are shuffled off to another, maybe an endocrinologist, who does more tests and can't find anything. Maybe it's psychosomatic he/she says. I don't know of any disease like this. What did YOU do to cause it, is the usual question.
So from doctor to doctor you go, with doctors not having a clue what you have and now prescribing this and that for the pain. If they can't find the cause, they will try to alleviate the pain. Or put you through a grueling battery of tests, which end up excluding this and that. Finally, if you are lucky, you find a doctor who goes beyond the mundane and researches the literature (or recalls a previous patient with a similar problem) and the diagnosis of Dercum's Disease is made.
This is Dercum's Disease (also Dercum Disease or Adiposis Dolorosa), first identified by Francis X. Dercum, a neurologist in Pennsylvania, in 1892, and bears his name. The disease is characterized by painful fatty tumors and/or fatty deposits. The tumors can be encapsulated or the fatty deposits can be diffuse.
Please sign my guest book so I know you've been here.
Sign My
Guestbook View My
Guestbook
Be sure you enter the correct e-mail (including the "@")
so I can reply!
So far, people have stumbled on this page.
[To Get the REAL number, add 21,000 to this number.]
For comments, discussion or support about this disease, please contact
me -
Maureen
Camarillo & Somis, California
Comments about web page format
should be sent to Don
Try using the Open Directory Project to search for other stuff. It uses human editors to intelligently add to their data base of web sites.
Please remember that the information provided on this site is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that existsNote: This page is sponsored by the author, Maureen and the webmaster, Don, as a public service, and we have not received any funding or contributions towards it creation and upkeep. Note that it is hosted, gratis, by Tripod, which provides the advertising at the top of the page. Not too steep a price, huh?
We subscribe to the HONcode principles of the Health On the Net Foundation