Living with Multiple Sclerosis: How Active Personal Care Can Help
Living with multiple sclerosis involves frequent flareups or even living with permanent disabilities. Personal care for multiple sclerosis helps minimize the effect these have on your everyday life.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease that affects your brain and spinal cord. No one knows why or how but something triggers the immune system to attack the myelin sheaths surrounding nerve fibers. These sheaths insulate our nerve fibers, allowing them to send and receive impulses quickly and efficiently. Myelin damage causes these impulses to be slowed or even lost.
MS affects each person differently. People will manifest multiple symptoms in varying degrees depending on which nerves are damaged. Initially, most people will experience vision problems (blurred or double vision), muscle weakness and stiffness, tingling, numbness, balance problems, and dizziness. These symptoms progress to tremor, fatigue, depression, problems concentrating, memory loss, hearing loss, bowel and bladder dysfunction and even leg paralysis.
Most people experience what is called relapsing-remitting MS. Symptoms come in bursts, followed by longer periods of remission. During these remitting periods, people make partial or even full recoveries. Weeks, months or even years may pass before their next attack.
There is currently no cure for MS. Current treatment options aim to help speed the recovery from a relapse, modify the disease course by limiting the number of relapses, and delay the long-term disability associated with MS.
How Active Personal Care Can Help with Multiple Sclerosis
Whether you are dealing with an increase in symptoms during a flareup or are living with more permanent disabilities, Active Personal Care can help. We are available morning, mid-day, or evening. Our aides can help on weekdays or weekends. We help with long-term, short-term, or more temporary cares as well. Our individualized care plans put your needs first, no matter what they are.
Some of the ways that Active Personal Care can help you manage Multiple Sclerosis include:
- Bathing and dressing assistance
- Meal preparation
- Light housekeeping and laundry
- Errand and grocery shopping
- Transportation help
- Medication management
- Companionship
- Respite for caregivers
- Development of a light exercise program
Active Personal Care’s Tips for Caregivers
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has provided several recommendations to help patients and their caregivers living with MS be well on a day-to-day basis.
- Manage your MS Symptoms. Visit with your doctor on a regular basis. This will allow him to monitor your disease course, evaluate symptoms and keep you up to date on current and new therapies.
- Don’t Neglect Your General Health. Living with MS can be time-consuming and expensive. You might be tempted to ignore other general health checkups. Don’t! You need to pay attention to preventative healthcare just like everyone else.
- Plan your day. Fatigue often becomes part of life with MS despite your best efforts. Plan your day according to your needs. Monitor your energy levels and plan your day so you don’t run out of energy before your day is up.
- Exercise. Exercise is not a cure for MS. It will not prevent, slow, or reverse the damage that has or will occur. It does improve muscle strength and flexibility. Develop an exercise program around your needs and abilities.
- Establish a support system. Develop a support system that meets your emotional and spiritual needs. Rely on family, friends, prayer, spiritual connections, the internet, etc… It doesn’t matter how or where you find support; just make sure you have a good system in place.
Learn more about what the National Multiple Sclerosis Society recommends here.
Why Choose Active Personal Care?
Like most progressive, neurological diseases, multiple sclerosis changes over time. If you or a loved one are living with MS, your needs are bound to change as the disease progresses. Active Personal Care is always here to help, however your needs dictate. Call and schedule your free, in-home consultation today and experience for yourself how we can help you live with Multiple Sclerosis.
