Share Your Multiple Sclerosis Story
We are looking for people living with MS who are interested in raising awareness and providing valuable insight into what life with this condition is really like. Sign up to Learn More.
Performer and multiple sclerosis advocate Brittany Quiroz is keeping it real—and empowering others. If all the world is a stage, as William Shakespeare’s Jacques asserted around 400 years ago, most of us are metaphorical bit players whose challenges and dreams don’t factor into…
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Tonianne has lived with physical and mental health conditions since childhood. These are their frank, empathetic words about coping and learning over time — a valuable message all the more appropriate during this Mental Health Awareness Month. This story mentions self-harm and other…
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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is like personality — it’s very different from one person to another. The symptoms are unique to everyone diagnosed with MS and may be misunderstood by people who don’t live with the condition. March is Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month, so…
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Jim has lived with Charco-Marie-Tooth disease, which affects peripheral nerves that control the muscles, since childhood. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 60 years old. He urges those who are recently diagnosed with a condition to accept, process and move past emotions…
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Like so many people living with conditions that don’t present with obvious symptoms, Carol has repeatedly experienced others’ insensitivity. Here Carol shares some of these comments and offers advice to those who find themselves facing similar circumstances. With the year coming to a…
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Kelly Kinard has been through it all. She has experienced symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) since 1992, supported her former husband when he was diagnosed with MS in 2003 and has been battling melanoma since 2010. Here she shares her experience with the…
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Heidi P. from Ohio, sent us the following story. Like 3,000 other community members, Heidi has multiple sclerosis (MS), and was diagnosed 29 years ago in 1992. Her MS story reflects what so many others who have chronic autoimmune conditions have told us….
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MacKenzie is a Health Stories Project member from Kentucky who is most passionate about changing the way people see folks with multiple sclerosis, “They tend to focus on all the things we can’t do instead of all the things we can.” She recently responded…
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Jae knows a thing or two about change. A passionate writer and volunteer in Chicago, he discovered he was living with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2019. We would like to thank him for sharing candidly about the first stages of this life-changing diagnosis….
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“I have fits of uncontrollable laughter and it’s not fun or funny.” That’s how Jennifer explains life with pseudobulbar affect (PBA). Wendy has the same condition and describes her experiences: “It’s frustrating because you have no control over [laughing or crying]. They occur…
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The following inspirational story was written by community member, Giovanni Profeta. Help us celebrate his 2-mile swim in open water by leaving congratulations in the comments below! I am a sports enthusiast. Prior to my diagnosis, I was a swimmer and freediver. My…
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Nikki Albert has coped with chronic pain since she was a kid, when joint hypermobility syndrome left her with aching knees and insomnia at just eight years old. As a young adult, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and migraines. Now in her early…
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Fear of disease progression is an understandably frightening thought that affects hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.
We asked people living with multiple sclerosis what they would say to someone who fears progression of their MS. While the responses are from people with MS we feel they have the power to impact LOTS of people across many conditions.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease that causes the immune system to break down the protective covering of nerve cells, disrupting communication between the brain and the rest of the body. People living with MS often experience weakness in their limbs, slurred speech,…
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Multiple Sclerosis is a condition of the central nervous system that interferes with messages between the brain and the body. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society estimates that at least 400,000 in the U.S. have MS. For unknown reasons, people who live in northern…
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Share Your Experiences with Pseudobulbar Affect to See if You Qualify for a $50 Honorarium Insult to injury. For many people, this saying describes what it feels like to be diagnosed with Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA). PBA is a neurologic condition that appears in…
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Share Your Experiences with Pseudobulbar Affect to See if You Qualify for a $50 Honorarium Laughing and crying. They’re two of our most personally revealing behaviors. Why? Because they let people around us know when we feel joy and when we feel pain….
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January, 1980. Things were looking good for Mark Tallman. He had just been promoted at the oil company he worked for to run one of its warehouses near Salem, Ore. As he was conducting the inventory one morning, he dropped his pen. Paying…
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Health Stories Project was created to give people opportunities to share their personal health experiences and to learn from the experiences of others.