MS is an extremely unpredictable disease. It has a wide range of symptoms and outcomes. How it will
    behave depends mainly on the area that has affected the nervous system. It also depends on the
    type of MS that you have and the control that you obtain through medication, therapy and
    nontraditional medicine (Holistic, meditation etc.).

    At this time the MS is classified as:
  • Relapsing-Remitting
  • Progressive-Relapsing
  • Secondary Progressive
  • Primary Progressive

    Even though there are symptoms common to all of us, each person will have its own symptoms and
    non of us will present all the symptoms listed below. In the section named "links" you can find more
    information about the treatments available.

    Visuals Problems:                 
  • Blurry Vision
  • Double Vision
  • Optic Neuritis
  • Involuntary Eye Movements
  • Blind Areas in the Visuals (You can't see certain parts in your visual area for example you get hit
    again the furniture or hit a wall.)
  • Rarely total blindness

    Coordination and Balance Problems:
  • Lost of balance
  • Tremor
  • Gait problems (like being drunk without drinking alcohol)
  • Vertigo
  • Lack of coordination (you try to reach something and your hand doesn't do it)
  • Weakness that affect the legs and makes it difficult to walk

    Elasticity Problems
  • Alteration in the muscular tone and contraction of the muscles that affect how you walk or
    move.
  • Spasms

    Altered sensations
  • You feel things that are not there
  • Needles pricking your skin
  • Numbness
  • Burning sensation
  • There can be pain associated an inflamed nerve and muscular pain.

    Speech Problems
  • Your speech becomes slow
  • You can not pronounce clearly the words
  • There are changes in your speech patterns
  • Difficulty swallowing
  • There is difficulty to find the right word (sometimes you have to describe what you want to say)

    Fatigue
  • Is the most common and problematic problem in the MS
  • Is mostly very debilitating
  • Is unpredictable and is not related to the strength that you employ for your activity( you fix your
    bed and you feel that you have run a marathon, to walk form one point to another is a
    monumental action)                                                

    Bladder Problems
  • Frequent accidents or problems with voiding
  • There could be an increase in voiding activity
  • There could be a sense of urgency ("got to go")

    Intestinal Problems
  • Constipation
  • Lost of sphincter control

    Sex
  • Impotency
  • Lack of arousal or difficulty
  • Lack of libido
  • Lost of sensation in the genitals
  • Difficulty achieving orgasm

    Extreme sensibility to heat
  • Heat tend to increase the symptoms that we have

    Cognitives Problems
  • Lost of recent memory
  • Difficulty concentrating or slow to understand instructions or information

    Some of them will appear and disappear through time. Others will stay forever with us. What matters
    is that we have to be able to discuss them with our doctor and let him know if they have become
    worst or better. With the appropriate and timely treatment they can be controlled and you can
    continue to have a productive life.

    A very important thing is the way you feel about your symptoms. It is not worth it to keep worrying
    about them or to be depressed for the things that we can no longer do. We have a problem, a
    condition that we have to live with and you have to learn how to control or manage it. It is the only
    way to keep a good quality of life.

    We have to learn how to protect and take care of ourselves without any guilt feeling. As a woman,
    wife and mother they taught me that my family was first. This disease, like any other chronic disease,
    will teach us that if we don't learn to put limits of what we can and cannot do, what help us and what
    doesn't, we will never be able to put it under control.

    It should be clear to you that if we don't establish the limits, we won't be able to continue to be
    useful to our family. No, were are not going against the principle of being a good mother or  wife. We
    are only giving another perspective to the situation. If I want to be a good mother and wife(good
    father or husband) I have to learn to take care of myself too.

    Our lives will never be boring again since we will always have a problem to solve or see how a situation
    can be change to make our lives easier. From now on, we will always have challenges to conquer. At
    the end we will see how resourceful we have become.
What is going to happen?







Maria A Reyes-Velarde,
MD, MPH
hablemosdeem.com
©2001-2012 maria a. reyes-velarde
Permission to use/copy any part of the site
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ESCLEROSIS  MULTIPLE
©2001-2012maria a. reyes-velarde