"Dad, are you going to be in a wheelchair?" My oldest daughter asked me that question shortly after I was diagnosed with MS. She was young. Her sister was even younger. They didn't really know what multiple sclerosis was. Truthfully, I was still trying to understand it myself. What I remember most isn't having the answer. It's wanting to reassure my daughters while carrying so much uncertainty of my own. As a parent, one of the hardest parts wasn't explaining MS. It was navig

October is Health Literacy Month. If you’ve ever left a doctor’s appointment feeling more confused than when you walked in, this one’s for you. Health literacy is defined as the ability to find, understand, and use health information to make decisions. And according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, only about 12% of American adults have proficient health literacy. That means roughly 88% of us across education levels, income brackets, and backgrounds, struggle to

Multiple sclerosis affects roughly three times as many women as men. That ratio shapes almost everything about how MS gets talked about. In waiting rooms, in support groups, in research cohorts, in the images used on awareness campaigns. For the one in three who are men, that imbalance has consequences that go beyond feeling like an outsider in a Facebook group. Men with MS are more likely to delay seeking medical attention when symptoms appear. They are proportionally more l

We talk a lot about living with chronic illness. We talk less about what it's like to love someone who does. Care partners, including the spouses, partners, parents, children, siblings, and friends who show up every day for someone navigating MS, Lupus, Parkinson's, Rheumatoid Arthritis, or another chronic condition, carry something that's hard to name. It's not just the logistics, though those are real. It's the emotional recalibration that happens quietly, constantly. You l

Fatigue is one of the most common, and most misunderstood, symptoms of neurological and autoimmune conditions. Whether you're living with MS, Lupus, Parkinson's, or another condition, you've probably heard some version of "just rest more" or "pace yourself." And while those aren't wrong, they're not the whole picture either. Here's what most people don't know. Both overexertion and underactivity can worsen neurological fatigue. And fatigue with chronic conditions isn't the sa

You see your neurologist or specialist a few times a year. Those appointments are critical. The medications, the monitoring, the clinical picture. But what happens the rest of the year? The daily decisions that don't make it onto the appointment agenda. What to eat when fatigue is already winning. Whether to push through or rest, and how to tell the difference. How to explain what you're experiencing to people who don't quite get it. How to pace your energy so you make it thr