Lindsay Kelly, a multiple sclerosis caregiver advocate, shares how cognitive symptoms shaped her husband’s diagnosis and why brain-related changes in multiple sclerosis are often overlooked.
Transcript
One of the things that I found with MS or autoimmune diseases in general, and talking with the clinicians or the doctors, is that there’s a disconnect in how MS affects your brain.
And so that was one of the biggest struggles I had with getting my husband diagnosed with progressive MS is his was manifesting mentally. And so, he physically was fine. But mentally, he had short-term memory loss or a lot of mood swings.
The doctors work a lot with the physical aspect of autoimmune diseases, and it affects your brain as well. MS causes scarring all over your brain.
So it makes sense that some of these autoimmune diseases that caused those kind of scars on your brain would impact you in a way where it’s kind of like a, a TBI, if you would. It just affects people mentally.
