New blog marks MS Awareness Week

To mark MS Awareness Week 2017  Healthwatch Essex have sourced a blog from a local woman whose father lived with MS for 27 years. It tells her story of the special relationship she had with her dad and how the condition affected that. However, it also talks about how the condition didn’t define either him or their relationship. How, in spite of the difficulties it caused, MS wasn’t going to get in the way of the loving relationship they maintained.

It’s easy when talking about health care to get distracted from the fact what we are really talking about is people. It’s why so very often we try to draw the conversation back to the idea of addressing the whole person. It’s why care is as important as the services that directly impact on people’s health, and why one needs to work with the other so closely.

It’s why other social and economic factors have to be taken into account. Where do people live – both geographically and in terms of their housing, what opportunities do they have, how does the environment in which they operate on a day-to-day basis impact on their ability to access and use health and care services.

Much of this is part of a far wider discussion, but what Jennifer’s blog does is highlight the importance of looking at the person as an individual. Last Spring, we published our 555 Neurology Project report that spoke to people with a range of long term neurological conditions including MS. If one common thread came out of that work it was that everyone needs to be treated differently depending on their circumstances.

In many cases it was also noted that everyone will have a different experience of living with a particular condition. The way one person is affected will not be the same as the next in spite of having the same condition. And what is important to one person will be different to the next, so that it is not just the physical restrictions that may impact, but what those restrictions mean to that person dependent on their job, their lifestyle, their family etc.

Read Jennifer’s blog now titled My experiences of growing up with a dad with MS.

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