Life with MS disease seen through a computer | Life

MADRID, May 30 – Think about how frustrating your computer is when you look at the spinning wheel, or when your mouse suddenly takes a lifetime and begins to jump.

Now, replace the computer with your body and you will have an idea of ​​what it means to live with multiple sclerosis (MS), a neurodegenerative disease that can cause speech slowness, thinking difficulties, spasms and other symptoms.

In order to raise public awareness of this incurable disease, which affects more than two million people worldwide, the Spanish Association for Multiple Sclerosis has designed a special computer that recreates symptoms through equivalent computer problems.

A person can use the computer completely normally and a sudden error appears in the operating system.

The slider that slows down and falls on the screen, for example, is representative of fatigue.

The screen can become completely black, which would refer to vision loss. Etc.

The computer is designed to reflect the everyday life of a patient with autoimmune disease that attacks myelin, the fat that surrounds and isolates the nerve, thus preventing electrical signals from moving to and from the brain.

"My cables are down, just like the computer," said Gerardo Garcia, president of the badociation, diagnosed as suffering from multiple sclerosis in 1985 and who is now in a wheelchair.

Like many other patients, he suffers from "chronic fatigue," he said yesterday before World Multiple Sclerosis Day, May 30.

"If you make the necessary changes to the operating system (computer) to slow it down, you make a pretty good comparison with how your body works."

There is a treatment to slow the progression of MS, often called the "1,000-face disease" because of the number of symptoms.

But Celia Oreja-Guevara, head of the department of neurology at the San Carlos Hospital in Madrid, said that people did not always know that the disease was not immediately fatal.

"What is it, am I going to die?" She told a patient last week after the diagnosis.

The badociation wants to bring the computer to schools and hospitals to raise public awareness of the disease and possibly auction it.

With the funds, more computers could be created to raise awareness, says the report. – AFP-Relaxnews