This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

You certainly know your stuff!
I thought I was fairly clued up when it came to MS and the research that I'd been doing but I've been proved wrong. I do enjoy learning about this illness and not only because it's the interest directly to me that it also means that I can explain ms more clearly to people when they ask. I think the thing that is really been highlighted to me over these past few years is that ms is a fascinating illness and has confused so many people in so many ways! It's managed to confuse the most intelligent doctors and researchers among us!

As much as I find ms, the illness and research around it interesting, I also find it quite disheartening. Disheartening because I don't know what I can do with it and sometimes how I can live with it, but there you go I've got to and so far I've it to be found it a fascinating journey. I somehow feel that is the researchers are looking in the wrong direction, I don't know how they can change where they need to be looking more but I feel that is missing a trick!

Katie

"Probably...but I doubt it".

Many times I find this answer can be most fitting as it is here.

Q: Where did this answer come from?
A: Late one evening in college I was working in the library at the front desk. A fellow student passed by heading downstairs towards the Audio/Visual department and asked me if the A/V Dept. was still open. I answered him honestly: "Probably. But, I doubt it".
What?! There was a probability it was open. There could be a high OR conversely there could be a low probability it was open. All I said was "Probably" and since it was nearing ten o'clock I truthfully told him that I doubted it.

It's an all-purpose answer.

Katie, I agree 100% with your statement:

My own analogy is MS is like being locked in a room lined with shelves filled with boxes of keys. The key to the door and freedom is in one of those boxes! But researchers have been looking in the wrong box for 60 years (the one labeled "autoimmune" or "neurology.")

My own opinion is that they need to be looking in the box labeled "neuro-endocrine." HOW do we get them to try keys from a different box???

Hi Lynda,
Although we disagree on a couple of points that was a very good analogy. It might add to accuracy to also point out that the room is on fire! A definite time factor is involved.......and more than double the amount of years researchers have been looking.
Bob