Free Essay: Culture Background of the Patient with Multiple Sclerosis

Emily hails from a small family in Philippines her parents are peasant farmers in their small village together with her two brothers, they seemingly fared well until Emily was struck by an illness that rendered her weak, and sickly every time. In their village, her parents wondered, there has never been a presentation of such an illness. They are not aware of how the disease is called, its path physiology and its treatment. However, their daughter Emily has to be given more attention than before when she was healthy. Her condition has made life difficult for her. "I struggle day by day to adjust" Emily burst out with eyes beaming with light. Her two brothers cannot fulfill all her daily needs. Because there has never been an experience of such disease presentation within Emily's village, different people have varied prescription for her. However, she had to stick to her parent's decision to visit a neurologist to diagnose her of the condition. Emily made a bold move to see a specialist, and it is from the visit that she learned of her derailing condition. At first, she could not believe that Multiple Sclerosis is what the condition that struck her.

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Emily believes her current condition is as a result of a combination of factors: environmental factor and stressing moment5 she has had to cop up with during her childhood ages until now. Environmentally, Emily says she used to stay with her parents in Philippines where at least there was sunlight necessary for vitamin D responsible for some biological body processes. Her current place of residence rarely experience sunlight and thus the deficiency of the vital vitamin D. coupled with environmental issues, Emily has had to read in school and sleep late in the night so that she can be the first in their family to enroll in an American university. This is because her father had insisted that she had to do better in her grades in high school. Another source of stress emanated from her boyfriend although she fails to divulge more on the relationship, she attributes the beginning of her predicament as anchored on stress and environmental factors.

Emily describes her condition as perplexing, her vision often disturbed her, balancing her gait is another problem, she says, "it is terrible to be in this state, everything is done to you by somebody." In the health facility, the doctor listens to the symptoms, physical disease manifestation, and recommended MRI procedure to be undertaken. The first step is the taking of blood sample. Since there are no specific tests for MS, blood sample helps to rule out other conditions with similar symptoms. The next procedure is to do the spinal tap. This done through a lumbar puncture from which a small amount of fluid is collected from the spinal canal. Typically, if MS is present, the test shows abnormalities within the antibodies associated with MS. Finally, what rules the availability of the condition is the MRI, which with precisions reveals charred lesions on the brain. This is exactly what revealed the condition of Emily.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of the diseases that pose a long-lasting trauma and affect humanity when it strikes. The disease comes with a deterioration of the brain, spinal cord, as well as the optic nerves of the eye. As a result, it is a precursor to loss of vision, muscle control, body balance, and other basic body functions. The effects of the MS is greatly felt by the patient since it harms the entire body by disrupting the ability of the body parts and nervous system to support complete communication within the body. Its resultant outcome, therefore, is disastrous to the whole body, as it elicits various signs and symptoms including mental and psychiatric problems. While its cause remains unclear, some of the thoughts brought on board include the possible destruction either by the body immune system or by the failure of the myelin sheath to produce essential neuron cells within the brain. Some of the proposed causes for MS include genetically and environmental factors such as viral infections. The diagnosis of MS has always based on the presenting symptoms and signs as well as the resulting medical tests. In addition to lack of clear cause of the condition, the clear treatment is also not known. Treatment procedures only attempt to improve the condition after an attack as well as preventing any new attack. The report is at the moment giving a close examination of the feelings and reactions from the patient perspective as far as the condition is concerned. Intriguingly, the lifestyle of an individual suffering from MS is full of challenges; it is for these reasons that one of the patients, Emily a young girl aged 22 accepted to share her predicament as she struggles to cope with life amidst challenges brought by her MS condition.

Suffering from such an illness only has the weight that the victim is the only person to understand its far-reaching consequences. Emily has been living with the condition for the past four years; one is left to sympathize but also to motivate her that the condition is not necessarily the end of life. At the mention of her aspiration to live a healthy life, Emily winks at me as she begins to narrate the painful path of being entirely diseased for the past four years. She starts by responding to my first question of how long she has been living with the condition. She recalls her history of being healthy throughout her teenage and normal just like others. She had been fine with no sickness history until when she turned 18 years. That is when things took a different turn. She started to doubt her vision which was gradually diminishing. She could not see images as it used to be some years ago. Asking her how she came to know her condition, she narrates the first step to change her life was the moment she visited the doctor who told her that her condition requires him to run diagnostic tests on her. The doctor carried out a multiple of tests by selectively ruling out other conditions that might produce similar symptoms and signs as Emily's case. This was referred to as differential diagnostic since Multiple Sclerosis does not have specific tests to ascertain its presence. The doctor only relied on some signs while at the same time recommending blood tests, lumbar puncture, and MRI. This following test revealed some patched areas in my brain and spinal cord that which were thought by the doctor to have contained MS lesions. This is the moment I learned that am suffering from a condition of the brain, Emily said with a lot of sighs.

The patient realized she was plagued with MS when the symptoms and signs detected from the doctor's diagnostic tests were concretely on and off in her life. One of the signs was the loss of balance during movements, speech, and vision. In essence, the disease typically progresses to varying degrees of both cognitive and physical disabilities. Since the condition affects the nervous system, related conditions were prevalent in the patient such as loss of vision and stroke. "The doctor's findings did not surprise me at all" she attested being preoccupied with the treatment method to resolve her of the condition. Her distress was displayed when she realized that the condition is incurable and she will have to manage the condition the rest of her life. "Maintaining to live with his condition is unbearable," she murmured to me. It overtakes the life and renders an individual helpless at the care and mercy of other relatives and friends. The condition dethatched me entirely from the common setup; nothing is exciting at all since I live by the day's dictates. Within the social platform, there is little to be described. The patient no longer gets to know how the family is woven and what happens in the nuclear set up because of the periodical knock out in the world realities.

Despite the difficulties, it was not easy to tell, if she has been living with MS condition for the past four years. At 22 years old, she wakes up differently each morning, sometimes with numbness and the loss of vision which is described as the initial signs of MS, a disease that has since turned her immune system to antagonize her whole body. At times, the immune system attacks some of the protective layers of her skin causing abnormal pain. She asserts that the condition is manageable but only if it is detected at an earlier stage and put on management as soon as possible.Trying to get information from the patient sometimes proves difficult, especially when the nature of the sickness is one that despairs the patient. Responding to the course the condition has had in her life whether she thinks the condition will change her life, the patient offered to give some of the general consideration she thought. "This is a condition that I will have to live with the rest of my life" it has taken me time to accept that, she asserts. "I sometimes took to internalize that the condition will be part of my life, the doctor had made it known to me that there is no cure but the condition can only be managed. The patient attested that having realized this would be her forth will condition; she felt hopeless. Everything in her life began to create novelty; her life was preparing to dynamics as far as biological processes are concerned. "I would experience a variety of symptoms like seizures or paralysis. When an individual heard of such cases of seizures or paralysis and more so thinking that, they will happen to you, the disease becomes frightening indeed.

On the question of whether the patient had prior knowledge about the condition having read, heard, or seen it anywhere, the patient was discrete. "This perhaps too is a condition I had not known leave alone thinking of living with it the rest of my life" she had not heard of it, maybe because the disease had a rare representation within the place she had grown. Commenting about the nature of her condition with the disease, she would describe the while pack of her life as annoyance interrupting her life. Perhaps the most occasion in her life where a ticking bomb awaits to explode. She described the situation as unpredictable being unaware of what will strike in the next hour. In many cases, patients have always had different ideas towards the cause of their condition.

Cases of multiple sclerosis may prove to be difficult to their understanding because even the world of science and research still struggle to understand it. However, asking the patient reasons that a pertains to him or her contracting a certain condition is worth to assess his or her view. When Emily was asked her view on the cause of her condition (MS), she blamed it on stressful moments that have donned her life since her younger age. In addition to stress, the patient had a view that environmental factors also played a part in her predicament. Her primary causes included environmental change and stress. Born in a tropical region in the Philippines, with a lot of exposure to sunlight, it was a favorable place to be regarding the body the availability of vitamin D, later on, Emily moved to a cold state where there would be no sunlight this might have caused the deficiency of vitamin D in her body.

Asked if she could attribute any secondary cause to her condition, she complained of stress." I found stress almost in every place I went, in the family, relationships, and in academics where my father was optimistic of me to perform tremendously in college. They had wanted me to be the first generation college student and attain a degree in America. To say least, I had less sleep in my high school to attain good grades." Additionally, the patient opened up and revealed her rocky relationship with her boyfriend back in their village. All these amounted to stress that might have posed severe damage to the inner lining of the brain. Hypothetically, she thought these might be t\the exact causes of her health condition. To her, the stress and environmental deficiency of Vitamin D triggered the whole situation in her body. "I had started to lose my sight, and getting it difficult to control my posture. The body balance was becoming a problem, and it could be maintained no more except under assistance from the family members.

Nobody has ever anticipated living with any health condition. The patient gave this answer when she was asked as having considered living with such health condition. Multiple sclerosis in totality means a life-threatening condition. It incapacitate an individual, no one would wish to be plagued. Life is full of challenge to those who live with MS condition; they have to continually visit neurologist as well as being on drugs to manage the situation. So far, treatment of MS has only two aspects: immunomodulatory therapy (IMT) to manage immune disorder as well as other related therapies to modify the symptoms (Solaro, Claudio, and Michele, 22)The IMT is often done to manage the relapses and at the same time to slow down the condition progress. Concerning the reaction of others towards an individual with MS, it is difficult to tell since different people have different personalities. "My family accepts me, they understand my condition and that is what is important." MS is a rare case; the patient said she has never seen somebody with the condition, but her neurologist told her other cases have been managed and she is not an exception. The patient asserted that her condition is a little different from other health conditions since she will have to live with it the rest of her life. Asked whether the condition was linked to a life event, she revisited the case of environmental factors and stress exposure.

Work Cited

Polman, Chris, Alan J. Thompson, T J. Murray, Allen C. Bowling, and John H. Noseworthy. Multiple Sclerosis: The Guide to Treatment and Management. Sydney, Australia: Accessible Publishing Systems, 2010. Print.

Scolding, Neil, and Alastair Wilkins. Multiple Sclerosis. , 2012. Print.

Scholz, Erwin, and Carl Muller. Multiple Sclerosis: Causes, Diagnosis, and Management. New York: Nova Science, 2012. Print.

Solaro, Claudio, and Michele Messmer Uccelli. "Management of pain in multiple sclerosis: a pharmacological approach." Nature Reviews Neurology 7.9 (2011): 2012. Print.