Faces of MS: Event highlights debilitating disease, research efforts

10:50 a.m. CDT, May 5, 2012

BEMIDJI —

Nicole Jackson didn’t pay much attention to the symptoms when they first appeared.

Instead, Jackson’s focus was on raising her three children, ages 9 to 12, and tending to their busy lives.

Carson Stensland also found the effects gradual but debilitating, forcing him to leave his job as a group home administrator.

And Ann Hayes internalized the symptoms, even going as far as to blame herself, to the changes she experienced.

All three have learned to live with multiple sclerosis, a chronic and often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system.

Symptoms of MS, as it’s commonly known, can vary significantly from person to person, and range from mild, such as numbness in the limbs, to severe, with paralysis and vision loss possible.

“I feel this disease is still fairly invisible to people,” says Hayes, owner of Brigid’s Cross Irish Pub and Restaurant in Bemidji. “With MS, it’s not an obvious disease. It can start as quietly as causing you to drop words in a sentence.”

According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, about 400,000 people in the U.S. have MS. Each week, 200 people are diagnosed with the disease.

And the prevalence of MS appears to be greater in northern climates.

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