Hawken Miller, features writer —

The wing of the small aircraft dipped below the horizon, revealing a strip of sand in the middle of the Bering Sea. On one side, miles of ocean. On the other, a lagoon. It was 1995, and Melissa Cook, her husband Elgin, and their three small children were beginning an…

Jasmine Iona Brown was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2003 when she was pregnant with her son. Since then, the 50-year-old Tacoma, Washington, teacher has faced a number of challenges related to her MS diagnosis — fatigue, nerve pain, and cognitive issues. Her family, Brown said, was neither…

Doctors typically prescribe medications to help manage symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), but a veteran nonprofit focuses on a little-known, much-overlooked part of treatment: therapeutic adventuring. First Descents was founded in 2001 to bring free outdoor activities to young adults with cancer. After a successful pilot study,…

When Sarah Garcia was diagnosed with the relapsing-remitting form of multiple sclerosis (MS) at age 13, she didn’t know any other young Latino women with the neurodegenerative disorder. Garcia grew up in a tight-knit Hispanic community in Socorro, Texas, near El Paso. Most of her doctors were white,…

Erin Stevenson’s doctor laughed when she asked him 13 years ago if the vertigo she felt while training for a first 100-mile bike ride could be related to her mother’s multiple sclerosis (MS). MS isn’t a genetic disease, but Stevenson managed to persuade the doctor to schedule a brain…

Reviewing an MRI of one’s brain and seeing lesions on it is a frightening prospect for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). “The lesions, the bright spots on a brain scan, that’s probably the last place in your body most of us want to see things. [It’s] such an important…

Nothing was working for Jennifer Stansbury Koenig, who was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) in 2010 the day before she learned she was pregnant. The first disease-modifying therapy (DMT) Koenig started in 2013, Tecfidera (dimethyl fumarate), an oral capsule developed and marketed by Biogen, made her…

Sports was a huge part of Armand Thoinet’s life, and when he was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) one week before his 19th birthday, that life turned upside down. He could no longer engage in activities that mattered greatly to him, such as rugby, tennis, and skiing. “I…

It took some time for Tyler Campbell to truly accept he had relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. The San Diego State University running back had just finished his junior year in 2007 when his multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms began. After an MRI confirmed the diagnosis, his neurologist cleared him to…

The main character of a new, five-issue reprise of the original “Darkhawk” Marvel comic battles crime while navigating his way through being newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Connor Young, a 17-year-old high school senior and basketball star, has his life turned upside down with this news, when he…

Whether we are aware of it or not, music infiltrates every part of our daily lives. It may be as subtle and inadvertent as music playing in the background at the grocery store or as obvious and intentional as jamming to tunes on our own playlists. But music also can…

The first World Brain Day, created by the World Federation of Neurology (WFN), occurred seven years ago, and since then has been devoted to raising awareness about disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and epilepsy. This year, WFN, which represents 122 national neurological societies, is turning its…

World MS Day, created by the MS International Federation and its members in 2009 to bring together the multiple sclerosis (MS) community, will this year continue online its 2020–2022 theme of improving connections to break down social barriers. The global MS campaign, featuring…

Although multiple sclerosis (MS) affects many different races and ethnicities and may even be more aggressive in some of these patient populations, minority representation in MS clinical trials remains critically low. Black patients made up only a fraction of the total enrollment in large-scale Phase 3 trials for three…

Greg Smiley’s world changed abruptly in 2013. He was racing down a mountain road on an outback cycling trip in South Africa, when he hit an obstruction in the road and fell face-first onto the pavement, still clipped to his bike. The impact did considerable damage, including a potentially disfiguring…