from the audience: multiple sclerosis

2 months ago, my family and I took my mom out for her birthday to see one of her favorite comedians perform in San Francisco (cuz I’m such a great daughter). The show was great, and we got to meet some really cool people. But one part of the show stuck out to me and my family; like most shows, there’s a warm-up act before the main performance begins, and the comedian in the warm-up act was drastically different than the main show, and not in the best ways. By the way, my family loves to analyze, so our drive back from SFO was a full analysis of why there was such a difference. Here are our observations:

- the jokes were mid

- The comedian stood in one place and just talked, and talked, and talked

- They wouldn’t really do anything with their hands or body other than lean forward and then lean back

- They weren’t exactly engaging and clear

So throughout our discussion of these things, I kept nodding along with my family. And then I remembered the comedian mentioning that she had MS, or multiple sclerosis. Before I tell you what MS is, let me just tell you that 3/4 of the observations I talked about are related to symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

MS is

a disease that causes breakdown of the protective covering of nerves. Multiple sclerosis can cause numbness, weakness, trouble walking, vision changes and other symptoms. (Mayo Clinic)

Multiple sclerosis is also a disease known as an auto-immune disorder, meaning that our immune system that normally helps us and does good stuff, now mistakenly attacks healthy cells; not great. But MS affects people differently. Some people barely experience symptoms, others have worsening conditions over time.

And only 0.04% of the population has multiple sclerosis. 0.04 percent people. If you didn’t notice already, that’s not a lot. This means that the small percentage of people who experience it, they themselves experience it differently. Multiple sclerosis has different types, symptoms, and severity based on each person, and if you want to study the disease, it’s like looking into a pool of fish but finding out that the only 4 fish in there are all different types, shapes, and sizes; so what do you research?

This is why neurodegenerative diseases are so hard to find cures for because of their complexity. Although I only gave a short description of MS, you can see why that comedian I saw can do nothing about her disease, and have to keep going on with her job. Most of the audience at that comedy show probably don’t know what MS is, and like my family, immediately blame the comedian’s performance on their skill. She may have been incredibly funny in her career, but due to her disease, the audience perceives her differently, you become a whole different person in their eyes just because of two letters: MS.