SEMANTICS

Sclerosis – from the Greek meaning hard.  In medical terms the word is used to mean ‘stiffening’

Multiple – ummmm.  Many?

So, many hardening/stiffening.

Why then, if the explanation given is that in MS the nerves are stripped of the myelin sheath;  what is the link between the stripping of the nerve coating and then the hardening of the muscle?  Does the stiffening occur because of the deprivation of nerve communication?

This pondering has been knocking about in the back of my brain for some months but has been stimulated because of a rough weekend.  By the end of it my right leg feels like the lid of a sardine can where the key has been used to open the can (do these tins of sardines still exist in today’s 21st century style packaging?). The muscles (tendons? ligaments?) in my right leg are so tight and unmoving now it makes trying to walk painful (before, when I limped it was just because the leg didn’t seem to work properly; now it HURTS). Those organs are like a tightly coiled tin lid and trapped with no means of releasing them.  It would be an awful lot easier to just sit in a wheelchair in order to get about.  Add to that my balance issues, it does make getting about quite tricky.  I walked at the edge of the lane yesterday and whenever a car passed me I was aware of hanging onto a fence or bush or wall, just in case I tottered over into the path of the vehicle.

My right hand is definitely worse and when I’m tired, positively claw like.  Added to which I have no strength in it so opening a tricky lid or unwrapping a packet of biscuits, doing up buttons or cracking an egg is not easy.  Not impossible, yet.  But its easier to use my left hand.