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. I

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 else can be so useful in life!
What should I expect?







Maria A Reyes-Velarde,
MD, MPH
hablemosdeem.com
HABLEMOS  DE
ESCLEROSIS  MULTIPLE
©2001maria a. reyes-velarde
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writings by Dr. Reyes-V.