Is MS a disease of subtraction?

[agate]

With arthritis, something is added on--pain, swelling, inflamed-looking joints. With cancer, tumors are added on. With so many disorders, something you didn't have before and ought not to have comes along and becomes part of your life.

With MS, you may say that numbness and tingling and paralysis are "added on" but really what is happening is something is being taken away.

Your ability to move, to walk, to speak, to see, to hear, to control your bodily functions, to move your hands and arms--some or all of these are being taken away.

Maybe so slowly as to be almost imperceptible but the process goes on.

Doctors look and "don't see anything." Maybe the tremor or the blind spots aren't showing up at that moment. But that doesn't mean you don't have a process going on that is sapping you. Or zapping you.

A disease of subtraction. It's a game of "Look how much can be taken away from this person, and yet he's still alive."

Insidious.