By Mel Maurer

Guest Columnist

March is Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month in Ohio.

Why? Our state has a very high incidence of MS one of the highest in the nation. Of the estimated 400,000 people in this country with MS, an estimated 18,000 live in Ohio. Whatever it is that brings MS to more people in Northeast climates is still unknown as is much about MS in general.

We do know that MS is a chronic disease that attacks the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord and optic nerves).

Signs and symptoms may include numbness or weakness in one or more limbs; partial or complete loss of vision, usually in one eye at a time (often with pain during eye movement); double vision or blurring of vision; tingling or pain in parts of your body; electric-shock sensations that occur with certain head movements; tremor, lack of coordination or unsteady gait; fatigue and dizziness.

Once thought to be a disease of young adults, we now know MS hits a wider range of ages.

MS, using the bodys own defense system, attacks the myelin sheath that surrounds and protects nerve fibers. The nerve fibers may also be damaged. The damaged myelin forms scar tissue (sclerosis), which gives the disease its name. When any part of the myelin sheath or nerve fiber is damaged or destroyed, communications to and from the brain and spinal cord are either distorted or interrupted.

I first became aware of Multiple Sclerosis in the fall of 1967 in a doctors small consulting room at University Hospitals when a neurologist, after examining my wife, Elaine, told us she had the disease. I had heard of it but I knew nothing about what it meant. Elaine knew more than that her best friends mother had MS and had been in a wheelchair for years.

The doctor, who would go on to become a nationally known authority on MS, warned us not to read up on the disease. He told us that most of what was written about it was about the severe form of MS, while in fact it could take many forms. Since then, research has identified four distinct courses of the disease: relapsing-remitting, primary progressive, secondary progressive and progressive relapsing.

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Multiple Sclerosis still is disease with many mysteries: Your Turn