About Dystonia

How many people know the name of the disease called dystonia?

I suffered from a disease called dystonia and received treatment for it, but I don't believe I have fully recovered. That's how I personally think of it as a disease.

Even when I talk about the name of dystonia or its symptoms, people usually just respond with something like "Oh, I see..." and then forget about it afterward. It may sound harsh to say, but perhaps it's simply because it's someone else's problem. People don't try to seriously understand the illness — the conversation just ends there, limited to that moment.

Of course, the other person probably doesn't mean any harm. I also don't want to spoil the mood of the moment, and I feel that even if I talk about it, this pain is hard to convey, and the details don't really get across — that's one reason I haven't talked about it with people around me until now.

Somewhere inside me, I may have resigned myself to the idea that this suffering and hardship is something you can't understand unless you've experienced it yourself, or that it's simply a disease that others won't understand.

I once experienced this firsthand, deeply.
I had told a coworker I often go drinking with that I have dystonia, saying "It's hard for me to write because of my dystonia" — yet when I was transferred for work, that same person gave me a ballpoint pen as a gift.

Perhaps because I tried to get through my time at work without letting people around me notice, they had forgotten about it, or maybe they simply didn't think it was that serious.

Because of this, aside from my family, I keep the name of my illness to myself, and I go about my daily life, including work, in a way that keeps others from noticing.

By the way, dystonia seems to come with various symptoms — I wonder what kind of symptoms everyone else experiences, or what kind of life they lead after treatment.