--on this board and others, a number of times; peripheral neuropathy is the most common condition nobody knows about, and the like.

Part of this may be that neuropathy is considered to be secondary to other conditions that get more publicity and research. There is neuropathy secondary to diabetes, resulting from toxic exposures (especially chemotherapeutic), caused by autoimmune issues, and so on. The doctors who specialize in these conditions, such as endocrincologists, oncologists, and rheumatologists, are sometimes aware of neuropathy, but are not well-enough versed in the area, or feel uncomfortable enough with the "additional" complications. So often the condition, even if recognized in the back of a doctor's mind, goes unremarked upon, and untreated.

Then, too, as dahlek implies, your average neurologist feels much more grounded in conditions for which there are more specific findings than there are for neuropathy, such as stroke, myasthenia gravis, MS . . .there are not that many neuropathy specialists out there, and such docs may be next to impossible to find if you don't live in an urban area with teaching/research hospitals.

Plus, many of the people with the condition have the "no-see-um" kind--primarily sensory, involving numbness, balance issues, pain, tingling, and the like--but they LOOK more or less OK, and so there are credibility issues. (I've found the people with motor involvement, who have obvious troubles moving, or use canes or wheelchairs, have less of a credibility problem.

Neverthless, I've argued in the past that the Neuropathy Association, and others, could do a lot better job hitting the media about the condition. Ironically, people began to find out about the condition a little more recently, but only because the new drug Lyrica was the result of a heavy marketing campaign for a number of conditions, including neuropathy (remember the ads with little needles shown in a foot, asking if your feet feel like this?). It's sad when drug marketing, with all the sleaziness that can entail, is what people with a condition have to point to "prove" they actually have something going on.

I've also spoken about how a famous spokeperson with the disease could do wonders, as Michael J. Fox has done for Parkinson's, and Montel Williams/Annette Funicello/Teri Garr have done for MS. We've had our famous sufferers--Johnny Cash (autonomic), Mary Tyler Moore (diabetic), Andy Griffith (Guillain Barre), but most have been reluctant to talk about it, or talk more about the "originiating" condition (such as Ms. Moore for diabetes). We do have Sister Dolores Hart, but she's hardly a household name. And, despite the regard we hold them in, neither are Rose or Mrs. D or Wings. A number of us have been the subject of articles or interviews, including myself, but these tend to appear in specialty journals such as Neurology--it's not like being on the cover of Time.

Then again, though, we have to keep fighting. Sometinmes, for whatever reasons, these things reach a critical mass, and suddenly get a lot more attention. It happened for celiac, it may be happening for Lyme disease. So we have to keep speaking, writing, and demanding recognition.