You're Faking It

"11 Children Have Mystery Illness in Colorado"
By: Jacque Wilson
Source: CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/03/health/colorado-partial-paralysis/index.html?hpt=he_c2

            Children's Hospital Colorado announced that there had been another child who had been hospitalized with partial paralysis. The doctors are not yet aware on what is causing these mysterious neurological illnesses. Ten other children at the hospital were identified with similar symptoms which include limb weakness, cranial nerve dysfunction, and abnormalities in the spinal gray matter. A mother of one of the Colorado children describes the alarming experience. She explained how it started with a cough, but then her daughter became apathetic and her fever rose. The mom took her daughter to the hospital, but the blood work looked "fine," (Wilson, 1) so the doctor sent her home to rest. The next day, the daughter complained of feeling weakness in her arm, but the mom thought her own daughter was being "dramatic and faking it" (Wilson, 1). The girl's muscle weakness got worse and two weeks later, she was admitted back to the hospital. Some children have tested positive for enterovirus D68, a virus that has been sending children from numerous countries to the hospitals with respiratory illness, but others have shown no signs of a virus ever being in their system. Doctors are trying to understand what is happening. 
             I think this article passes on various messages. One massive message that this article provides is that there are numerous diseases in the world and ones that yet need to be discovered. The article makes the reader wonder and exit this state of oblivion. It portrays to its audience the various mysteries that yet need to be discovered. Another crucial message that this article provides is the ignorance of people. Society nowadays thinks that people who are suffering from a serious medical condition or are in a constant state of pain are "faking" their condition. The thought of this bothers me to an unbearable degree. What is it that people can gain from "faking it"? Because being unable to move, being in continual pain, being under constant medication, being bedridden, and experiencing all these different emotional symptoms is not what you call "fun."