A victim of Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune illness that affects the brain and spinal cord. The ailment attacks the myelin sheath, a protective covering that surrounds nerve cells, and approximately 400,000 Americans have MS, according to the National MS Society. About 200 people are newly diagnosed each week.
A newly diagnosed patient of this sickness is Jack Osbourne earlier this spring. Only a short span of time since he became a father, this news gave him the shock of his life and he was in constant conflict regarding what to do. Frustrated and angrily he exclaims, “I was just angry and frustrated and kept thinking, ‘Why now? I’ve got a family and that’s what’s supposed to be the most important thing.”
On hearing his diagnosis, Jack and many other patients like him are facing decisions and problems to face such as, career, marriage and children. “People have spent their entire life up until the point of diagnosis imagining their life in a certain way, they have to interpret how they’re going to let go of that picture and how they see themselves, and fit that new information into the sense of who they are,” said Rosalind Kalb, a clinical psychologist and director of the Professional Resource Center at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. “It’s a grieving process, and you can’t move ahead on how you’re going to live with MS until you spend a little time with the loss of a life without MS.”
