Pain
Pain is a common symptom in MS; appearing in 55% of patients at some point of their disease process, especially as time passes. It is strong and debilitating and has a profound effect in the quality of life and mental health of the sufferer. It usually appears after a lesion to the ascending or descending tracts that control the transmission of painful stimulus, such as the anterolateral system, but many other causes are also possible. Most frequent pains reported are headaches (40%), dysesthetic limb pain (19%), back pain (17%), and painful spasms (11%).
Acute pain is mainly due to optic neuritis, trigeminal neuralgia, Lhermitte's sign or dysesthesias. Subacute pain is usually secondary to the disease and can be a consequence of spending too much time in the same position, urinary retention, or infected skin ulcers. Chronic pain is common and harder to treat.
Read more about this topic: Multiple Sclerosis Signs And Symptoms
Famous quotes containing the word pain:
“Each body has its art, its precious prescribed
Pose, that even in passion’s droll contortions, waltzes,
Or push of pain or when a grief has stabbed,
Or hatred hacked is its, and nothing else’s.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)