Neuro Note #3: Multiple Sclerosis

For this NeuroNote I decided to look more into Multiple Sclerosis, or MS. I chose this for my topic because I hear people talk about this condition a lot and I know it is a common diagnosis seen in the OT community. I knew it was a disease that attacks your immune system but I wanted to dive deeper to further understand this condition. Before I watched the TedTalk, Thriving in the Face of Adversity | Stephanie Buxhoeveden, I did some more research into MS from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society website.
MS is a disease that attacks the central nervous system, specifically the myelin sheath around the nerves. This causes the formation of permanent lesions that cause communication problems between the brain and the body. Scientists are unsure of the cause of MS and the progress, severity and symptoms cannot be predicted because every case is so different. Most people are diagnosed with MS between 20 and 30, with women more likely to be diagnosed. Nearly one million people in the United States are currently living with MS.
Stephanie was a 25-year-old neurosurgical intensive care nurse. She was also in a graduate program working towards her dream of becoming a nurse anesthetist.  When she wasn’t working as a nurse or studying for school, she could be found working out in the gym. One day at the gym her right foot fell asleep and that numbness never went away. Within a week, that numbness started to travel up her legs. She brushed it off though, thinking it was just a sports injury. A few days later, she was finally giving anesthesia for the first time in the operating room. In the locker room changing into her scrubs, she was stumbling around, and both of her legs were completely numb. She had no feeling from the waist down. She then lost all feeling in her right arm; couldn’t use her right hand and she couldn’t see correctly. She decided to call her teacher and try to go to the emergency room, but she couldn’t move. She got spinal taps, MRIs, and IVs and she now was diagnosed with MS. She has monthly IV transfusions that suppress her immune system to somewhat control the symptoms of MS. With the relapsing remitting MS that Stephanie has, she has periods of new attacks and periods of remission. But this remission is not promised. There is no way to tell if the symptoms will go away or not. Although Stephanie looks great, she has over a dozen lesions on her spine and her brain. She takes antiseizure medication her the nerve pain she has from a prior relapse. She never knows when the next relapse is coming and how severe it was going to be. She could be working out or hiking one day, but then cannot walk across a room the next day. Relapsing remitting MS is the most common type of MS. The other type is progressive MS where there is no way to slow the progression or stop the disease.
6 months after being diagnosed with MS, Stephanie took an exam and became a board-certified MS nurse. She then took a job as a temporary staff nurse working with her neurologist and loves it. At this point she did not know if she wanted to stay in her program working to be a nurse anesthetist or change her career. She decided to change her career path and become a nurse practitioner. She started a website to answer questions of people that have MS. She wanted to help these people feel more comfortable with their diagnosis and she wanted to answer these questions for them that some doctors don’t have time to answer. She is hard at work with researching more about MS. She works as an advocate, researcher and also donates herself for research to hopefully find a cure to MS.
After learning more about MS, I cannot imagine how scary having this diagnosis would be. In Stephanie’s case of relapsing remitting MS, it would be exhausting and so scary to not even know when your next relapse could be or if those symptoms will ever go away. With the progressive type of MS, knowing that you will not get better and things will just get worse would be terrifying. From the research I have done and watching Stephanie’s TedTalk, I hope to help my future clients with MS continue to live their lives independently and the way they want to for as long as I can. I recommend you go to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society website to learn more about MS and also watch this TedTalk to learn more about this disease. 

References

 [TedxTalks]. (2015, April 3). Thriving in the Face of Adversity | Stephanie Buxhoeveden |                                  TEDxHerndon [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuLOT6GsAxw

What Is MS? (n.d.). Retrieved August 02, 2020, from https://www.nationalmssociety.org/What-is-MS



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