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Dear all,

The New Zealand Multiple Sclerosis website has a page called world news which pulls in all press articles around the world which include a reference to MS. On the whole, the articles are not for the easily depressed (like me)as many are obituaries e.g. John Smith 52, after a long battle with MS. Many of the articles in the last few days have been about the case in Canada where a mother helped her 36 year old son with MS to commit suicide.

Today there was a article about pain where a man was confined to a wheelchair because of a car crash which gave him spinal cord injuries. Some time after he was dx with MS. Now there's bad luck and xxxxing bad luck and this poor guy certainly falls into the latter. But it made me think about trauma as a trigger for MS (or maybe the depression caused by the accident triggered MS, or an infection following the operation etc etc). Does anyone who uses this site believe there to be a link between a traumatic incident and the onset of their MS?

http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?j459953636&w=464753

In a UK evening paper last week there was a woman who had cerebral palsy (from birth) but who was dx with MS in her 40s. Bad luck or what. But perhaps the CP was the trauma that led to MS (although a research paper of a few weeks ago linked CP with the mothers getting a virus during pregnancy, and a virus has often been suggested as a possible trigger for MS). Has anyone else had another condition before the onset of their MS or indeed after? I know that Marie has mentioned arthritis?



Ian

My mother died suddenly and within months of that I had a break up with my fiance. Then came the attack followed by the diagnosis of ms. I have no illness to attribute the ms to...I'm not sure if the stress of those two incidents is responsible or not, but I have wondered as much. That said, a year after my mother passed my father died as well, followed by unemployment and then a move across the country to accept a job in a city where I don't know a soul. None of those stressful things have brought on another attack, though I have been on LDN for almost a year - who knows? Sure has been a crappy couple of years though, and all of these things combined has made it quite difficult to adjust to the diagnosis I think. Any one of them would have been enough to deal with. Isn't God a hoot? I try to remember there is always someone worse off and try not to wallow too much.

Mary

Here is a long list to back up the theory of attacks brought on by injury. Gary first welded without the use of a helmet and is blind in that eye. He did this more than once and the retina is fine. The retina is what you burn with welding, not the ON and that is what is bad on him. He was kicked in the head by a cow, he was a cowboy. Was paralyzed from the neck down in a couple of months time. Fell off a horse, was paralyzed from neck down in a couple of days. Had a number of attacks from the neck down in the following 3 years. Went into a 8 year remission. Picked up a bridge timber and toss it to the side, having popping sound in his back and knocked him to the ground. Started a set of attacks from the chest area down. almost complete paralysis each time for the next couple of years. His mother was killed in a car wreck in Nov 02. He was fine until New Years Day. Bottom fell out with first full attack in a while. So yeah, stress does it too, I think.

Hi Ian

Strange that you should ask as I have been wondering about this for some time!

I twisted my ankle just before havin the MS symptoms that led to my diagnosis some years later. My leg has slowly deteriorated, I get bad foot burn and have foot drop.

I did have some early symptoms, 10 years prior to this, but they cleared up completely with no residual damage. Yep, that was a stressful time.

Interesting theory.

J.

I believe that only ONE of Gary's attacks could not be pinned on injury, extreme stress, or infection. When his sinuses would get infected, he would have an attack. He can tolerate infection for about 1 week, but after that, it usually will bring something on.

I hbelieve it does If you've followed any of Odd ducks's posts then you've seen the biochemical markers of depression being the same ones that are implicated in the MS attack. It's a chicken and egg thing. These biochemicals, neurotransmitters and immune cells ALL do several kinds of t hings int he body. You cannot have upregulation of cortisol becasue you are furious all the time and not have it also impact you in terms of all the other things that cortisol does. It's part of the HPA cascade so it causes all those HPA issues we talk about on here. That's the simple boiled down version of what psychoneuroimunology is all about. I find it odd thart researchers are even talking about this with a question mark in their minds. Once again we have peple not even reading current research in their own field....
Marie

Re physical trauma. My sister was in an accident (something fell onto her at a store). She sustained a head injury and the MRI showed lesions leading to dx of MS. She deteriorated rapidly and in fact was successful in a lawsuit on the basis that while not causing MS the head injury contributed to the aggressiveness of the disease. I don't know too much about how that happened, I think there was expert testimony that such injury could weaken the BBB, it was about six years ago, so that theory could have been discounted since then. There is obviously a genetic factor, since I was diagnosed at about same age, I just don't know if I'm going to end up the same.