Many people probably aren’t aware that March has been deemed National Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month. Many people probably do not even know what multiple sclerosis is in itself.

I was one of those people who did not know what it was, until I was diagnosed with it in my senior year of high school and, to be honest, I was scared. I was left in the dark about what the disease was and I was very uneducated about it; I did not know whether it was something that would kill me.

Waking up in the morning, not feeling your side is something that would be quite frightening to anybody. I thought it would be gone within a few days, however, it wasn’t. A week passed and I knew I needed to get some help.

I was referred to a neurologist and then I was scheduled for several MRIs. Several lesions where found on my brain and spinal cord. Lesions are where the auto inflammatory response happens when the demyelization occurs.

Demyelization is the event which occurs during multiple sclerosis attacks, or relapses. If you have no idea what MS is, let’s think of it this way. Your nerves are typical to that of a phone line.

The outer covering, which would typically be made of some plastic, is the axon of your nerve cell. The insulated material that covers the wire (which in this case is the actual nerve that contains and sends information, much like that of a telephone) inside the line would be the myelin sheath, the main part affected from M.S.

In multiple sclerosis, the phone cord insulation is torn apart and broken, not letting messages relay perfectly down the phone line into the retrieving phone.

M.S. is exactly the same way. Except instead of electrical signals for telephones, the actual activity that would be felt is typically numbness, tingling, and other specific symptoms depending on what part of the brain or spinal cord is affected. The spinal cord would result more in physical changes in sensation while the brain could be either memory, cognitive or other symptoms.

Due to contrary belief, M.S. is actually not a death sentence, as some people may believe. M.S., however, is a chronic disease. Once someone has it, it stays with them forever. People with M.S. usually have injectable treatments, depending on their current prognosis and state in the disease.

M.S. is a disease that is truly unpredictable and is different for everyone. Someone may be wheelchair bound within a year of diagnosis, while another may not have any episodes for the rest of their lives.

I wish that M.S. would be one of the prominent diseases covered in the media. Because, let’s face it, it can be as devastating a disease as any other one out there.