Multiple+Sclerosis

 Overview
 * [[file:What is MS_.doc]] ||  ||

What is Multiple Sclerosis (MS)?

In August of 2003, I woke up one morning with numbness in my left foot/ankle. It felt like my foot was asleep and even included the tingling that is associated with it. Only, the numbness and tingling did not go away. In fact, over the course of the next few days it even got worse as the numbness and tingling spread to my left hand. I also started to walk with a noticeable limp. After a week or so when the symptoms kept getting worse I went to see my family doctor who ran me through a battery of simple tests as his office. I failed the majority of these tests. My doctor then scheduled me for a few other tests, including a MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and and EMG ( Electromyogram). The EMG came back normal but the MRI came back with showing a spot on my brain. My doctor immediately scheduled an appointment for me to see a neurosurgeon as he feared that I may have had a brain tumor. The neurosurgeon agreed with my doctor’s diagnosis and he scheduled me to have a brain biopsy. The good news was that the brain biopsy showed that I did not have a tumor but that I had __**demyelination**__ of the nerve tissue or Multiple Sclerosis. How common is Multiple Sclerosis? My MS doctor Dr. David Dawson gave me a good example he said “If you go to a wedding of about 300 people, odds are that at least 1 of those people has MS.” Think about that in a country like ours with a population of around 300 million people, about 1 million of us have MS.

 “**__Demyelination__** is the disruption or destruction of the myelin sheath, leaving a bare nerve. Results in a slowing or stopping of impulses traveling along that nerve.” (Medical-dictionary)

“__**Multiple sclerosis**__ (or MS) is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system (CNS), which is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. Symptoms may be mild, such as numbness in the limbs, or severe, such as paralysis or loss of vision. The progress, severity, and specific symptoms of MS are unpredictable and vary from one person to another.” (National MS Society)

[|Video about MS]