Another Mother’s Day is past and I enter my tenth year with Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS). It is my constant companion, the first thing I think of when I rise and the last thing I think of when I go to sleep.

Has it been a good day or a bad one? If it was good, I may not think of it so much, but if it has been a bad one, I praise God for the ability to go to sleep because when I am unconscious I do not burn.

I shudder when I think of the people in the world who have dealt with this for multiple decades. I hope that is not my fate, but if it is, I also hope I will handle it with strength, grace, and an open mind and heart.

If you have just discovered this blog and want to learn more about Burning Mouth Syndrome, visit BMS-Support and consider joining the BMS Support Group on Facebook. Between these two resources, if a treatment or cure is found, you will hear about it!

Going into year ten is a little scary, but I have to admit that I am a more informed and empathetic person when it comes to chronic pain than I used to be. I am willing to read through abstracts and medical journals and to lend a sympathetic ear to those suffering from a variety of neuropathic pain syndromes, knowing that we are all in the same boat. We are paddling together, my friends, hoping for research, discoveries, and eventually medications that will ease our pain with a minimum of side effects or God willing, a cure.

Keep talking with each other, keep looking for answers, and keep hope alive my friends. As the brilliant writer, Victor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

We may be subject to Burning Mouth Syndrome or other chronic pain, but we choose our attitude and our own way when it comes to dealing with them. Choose wisely.