My doctor said, for want of a better word, now that we've got medicines out here that can help, let's put you on one of them and say we're treating MS.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think eventually they're going to find out that MS is like 10 different things. I have a neurological disease something like MS, and it's MS, so let's take medicine for it.
I had about four days of like, 'Pity party, woe is me, it's all over.' Then I did some research and spoke with doctors and got in contact with people who have MS, and I soon realized it's actually a lot more manageable than the kind of public perception of it is, and that's part of the reason why I've been so outspoken about it.
My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught.
As I travel across the country speaking about MS, perhaps I can offer others comfort and hope.
I understand how hard it is to talk to people about MS. You don't want pity or random advice.
Someday they may cure MS, that idiot thing. It gets in there and they can't get it out.
MS is not really a degenerative illness. It is not fatal, nor is it always progressive.
Seventy-five percent of MS sufferers are women.
When I got diagnosed, the more research I did about it - MS overall, as a subject, as a disease - there's a lot of misconceptions and there's a lot of unknowns about it, and there wasn't anyone out that was close to my age or close to anything like me out there.
There were symptoms that I saw, and though I went to many doctors and had many tests, no one diagnosed MS.