The Impact of Multiple Sclerosis on a Patient's Life Essay

This can wreak havoc on a person’s emotional state, which Mairs comments, “I am immobilized by acute attacks of depression, which may or may not be physiologically related to MS but are certainly its logical concomitant” (Mairs 67). In addition to the unpredictable physical losses that one can sustain from MS - including vision, coordination, and bladder control - one can also lose their will to live a normal life. Mairs discusses the lives of two women who share the same disease, one of which, “...stays at home and insists that her husband, a small quiet man, a retired civil servant, stay there with her except for a quick weekly foray to the supermarket” (71). The other woman has an active life and tries to participate in as many activities as she would without the disease. Mairs aspires to live like the second woman as her life progresses, but the first woman has obviously lost her mental battle with the disease. Since there is no known cure for MS, the only thing that one who is diagnosed can do is accept that their life will always be changing and it will never be easy. Towards the beginning of her disease, she thought about MS constantly and wondered when the time would come that she would no longer be physically capable of killing herself. Once she learned that she would never finish adjusting, she was able to come to an uneasy peace with her condition. Besides the

b. Support: In 2007, it was reported that approximately 2.5 million people in the world have MS.

Multiple Sclerosis known as MS is a disease that affects the brain and spinal cord this disease, unfortunately has no cure, and would cause a person’s life to progress to become more and more difficult each day. They begin to lose the ability to control their body movements and make it seem almost impossible to carry out simple, everyday function (Nordqvist, 2012). Patient’s that battle diseases such as this will no longer have the will to live because they know that there health will not get any better and they will soon die a

The central nervous system (CNS) comprises grey matter, which contains neuron cell bodies and white matter, which contains the nerve axons. Most of the nerve axons are concentrically wrapped around by lipid-rich biological membrane, known as the myelin sheath. In the CNS, myelin is produced by oligodendrocyte. a type of glial cell. (Pfeiffer et al., 1993). These electrical insulating, multilamellar membranes significantly increase the electrical resistance, in which to prevent leakage of electrical currents from the axons, as well as decrease electrical capacitance to reduce the ability of the axons to store electrical energy (Shivane &

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, progressive neurological disease affecting all aspects of life: physical, cognitive, emotional, and social (Abma). It is known as an autoimmune disease, Where the body’s immune system turns against the body and destroys the protective covering that surrounds nerve cells. This damage to the nerve cells causes many problems for the patient including weakness, muscle stiffness, poor coordination and balance, tingling, numbness, tremors, blurred vision, slurred speech, and memory and concentration problems (Bren)

As a senior this year, I am looking forward to several endeavors, such as leading my team in my last year of cheerleading, participating in a Senior Engineering Design Project, and continuing to volunteer with VSVS, a program that allows Vanderbilt student to teach science lessons in local elementary schools. Moreover, I spent this past summer working on my research at the Vanderbilt Institute of Imaging Science and will continue my projects throughout the school year. I am excitingly close to finishing the project I have been working on that involves a magnetic resonance imaging study of patients with multiple sclerosis. We have employed quantitative magnetization transfer techniques at 7-Tesla field strength to obtain indices reflective

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a disease of the central nervous system. The central nervous system is made up of the brain and spinal cord. Both have nerve fibers that are wrapped in a myelin sheath. In MS, the myelin sheath becomes inflamed and gradually is destroyed. With the destruction of the myelin sheath comes an array of symptoms that may include numbness or tingling, balance problems, weakness, muscle spasms, and blurred vision.

In the world of neurology, there are a vast amount of neurological disorders, conditions, and diseases. One severe disease is known as Multiple Sclerosis. In this research essay, I will be discussing what multiple sclerosis is, symptoms, causes, personal experience, and treatments.

The pathos she uses to convey her message through this essay are strong words that inflict the reader with the pain and suffering accustomed with living with MS. However, Mairs, unlike others who may write to describe their horrors of living with a neurological disease, writes to prove her horrible possibilities and losses but does not ask for sympathy for them and is only wishing to educate about being able to make more out of life. In her sixth paragraph she states, “but the terrain left me has been ample enough for me to continue many of the activities that absorb me: writing, teaching, raising children and cats and plants and snakes, reading, speaking publically about MS and depression”, she is saying although this disease has crippled her and brought her to a more weakening form daily she has not lost love and ability to do the things that most make her happy. Mairs does argue that living with the crippling disease does suck and points out that no human should have to live with the pain and suffering of this horrible disease. She exclaims that she will wake up in the morning and feel as those who have worked a long day do and have to take it from

Multiple Sclerosis, commonly known as MS is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. Scientists have been studying MS since the 19th century. In MS, the body’s immune system produces cells and antibodies that attack myelin in your brain which is essential for the nerves in your brain and spinal cord to conduct electricity to perform its function. The attack on myelin results in vison loss, paralysis, numbness, muscle weakness, difficulty walking, stiffness, spasms, and bladder and bowel problems. MS has varying degrees of severity and affects people between the ages of 20-50, mostly women. Although there are treatments, there is no cause and cure yet.

Multiple Sclerosis is an autoimmune disorder where the myelin sheath within the Central Nervous System is attacked (National Multiple Sclerosis Society, 2017). The myelin sheath protects the axon of the nerve cell. When the myelin sheath is intact, the axon is able to carry impulses away from the neuron’s cell body, and the message carried is clear. With Multiple Sclerosis, the myelin sheath becomes scarred, hence the word “sclerosis”, and distorts the nerve impulses traveling over the CNS (National Multiple Sclerosis Society, 2017). This may cause the message to be changed or stopped altogether.

It was a raw, blustery March day and I was leading four classmates to my house to hash out the remaining details of our current English presentation. When I opened the door, however, I received a surprise. I had not anticipated my mother still being home and neither had my group members. Their faces turned slightly blank, as if they were trying to hide their confusion and surprise. The previously relaxed atmosphere had become very formal and quiet. I had seen this before.

As a child, I thought my parents were invincible. I grew up believing they were superheroes who had the ability to whisk away all my problems. Unfortunately, when I was 15-years-old, my father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The hardest part about his diagnosis was that his sister had been diagnosed with MS a couple years before and we had seen her health deteriorate so quickly that she was already wheelchair bound. During this time my family was scared. The little information we knew about MS did not seem hopefully and we were worried about what the future would hold for our family. Lucky, we were blessed with a great neurologist who eased the insecurity we felt and gave my father the strength to be optimistic about his diagnosis.

The debilitating disease of multiple sclerosis impacts the daily lives and independence of the people it afflicts. The condition affects muscle function, cognitive abilities, and causes physical and mental fatigue (Yu & Mathiowetz, 2014). As the disease progresses, these symptoms worsen and loss of independence emerges. As a counteractive intervention to slow this loss of autonomy, occupational therapy is a helpful tool. In this literature review the question that is addressed is what are effective interventions occupational therapists use for people with multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease. What this means is that the immune system is failing. Their cells are “confused” and begin to attack the body itself, in this case, the nervous system. When it works well, the immune system protects the body from infections, viruses and bacteria by destroying the foreign bodies that invade it. Stem cells are cells that have the ability to renew themselves and specialize into different cell types. Although , currently, there are few available stem cell transplant treatments that have been scientifically proven to be safe and effective.