Definitions and Me

What is CMT? First of all I'll give you wikipedia's quick definition of it:

"Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, also known as Hereditary Motor and Sensory Neuropathy (HMSN) or Peroneal Muscular Atrophy, is a heterogeneous inherited disorder of nerves (neuropathy) that is characterized by loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation, predominantly in the feet and legs but also in the hands and arms in the advanced stages of disease. Though presently incurable, this disease is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders, with 36 in 100,000 affected."

There are many different types of CMT: 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 2A... etc etc. They are all different, but as far as I can tell, have similar effects. I have CMT1A, so I know the most about that type (it is also the most common, affecting approximately 80% of CMT patients) and will be speaking from my perspective.
To clarify wikipedia's words, CMT is genetic. Example: I have it, my father has it, his mother has it, her father had it, etc. However occasionally there is a spontanious mutation in the genes and someone has CMT without having a parent who has it. (this is very rare)

I will go into more details later, but now I'll tell you a bit about me and why I'm writing this blog. Through my teenage years I have researched a lot about CMT, to try to understand it better. I only really found out I had it when I was about 13, when I started getting nerve pains in my arms. I've found that most sites that talk about it are very hard to understand, so I want this to be something that people can look to for easy to understand information. This will also be a journal for me. I'll write about things I'm trying, changes, new research, etc. I hope that eventually people will understand this disease (ugh, I don't like that word) better, and that together we can find a cure for it.

-Char