NeuroNews

Multiple Sclerosis Treatment Plans Should Be Followed Aggressively

My name is Doug Schell and I'm a Clinical Nurse Specialist at MidAmerica Neuroscience Institute.  More specifically, I am a Multiple Sclerosis Certified Nurse and I've been working at the MS Center at MidAmerica Neuroscience Institute since 2000.  During this time I've been very involved and focused on MS care and have found that dedicating my professional career to helping people with multiple sclerosis to be a very rewarding experience.

MS is a disease that has been described by two words, unpredictable and variable.  That makes living with MS a challenge and treating MS a challenge.  It is important to understand that every patient with MS is unique and MS varies from patient to patient. MS even varies within the same person; it varies from day to day and year to year.  While everyone has good and bad days in their life, people with multiple sclerosis REALLY have good and bad days. 

Managing all that change, variability and the individual variation between people with MS is both exciting and challenging to me as a healthcare provider.  Because of that our philosophy is to try to develop a close relationship with patients, see them on a regular basis, monitor how they are doing and test their function on a regular basis.  We get to know who they are and how their MS affects them.  This way, if their MS changes or starts to affect them in a different way - we are more likely to be able to pick up on that quickly and be able to deal with it appropriately. 

by Doug Schell, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Multiple Sclerosis Certified Nurse