Multiple Sclerosis No Longer a Death Knell for Patients


By Nancy Young, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Oct. 29--"The crippler of young adults."

Those words rang in Rick Powell's head after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1980 at the age of 26. He figured he was doomed to a short life in a wheel chair.

That was all he had heard about the disease that can cause severe nerve damage. It was all anybody seemed to know -- or would know until recent years, when breakthrough treatments started to become available.

"Gathering information about what MS was, at that time, was somewhat difficult," said Powell, 53. "When I was first diagnosed I was completely frightened. 'The crippler of young adults ' scared me completely."

Things have changed.

"The outlook is certainly much more hopeful" now, said Dr. Thomas Pellegrino, chairman of the neurology department at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. "Twenty years ago, I would have told them, 'There's nothing I can do.' "

But while the medicine that deals with MS has made leaps and bounds -- if still short of a cure -- the public perception of the disease is often still stuck in the wheelchair Powell feared.

"They don't know about MS now," said Sharon Grossman, president and chief professional officer of the Hampton Roads chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which serves about 2,600 clients in the region.

A couple of decades ago, it might take years just to get a good diagnosis. Even with a diagnosis, until the late 1990s, there wasn't much more that doctors could say other than " 'You have MS. Now go home and live with it,' " Grossman said.

Multiple sclerosis -- which affects about 400,000 Americans, the majority of them women -- continues to be something of a...MORE