COMMON PERSONALITY TRAITS OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUFFERERS
(an unofficial, unsubstantiated, unsolicited study of character type in multiple sclerosis)

Well, everyone has a profile, right? The extrovert, the introvert, the type A personality, the serial killer. What are we, as people with multiple sclerosis, like? Is there a common bond, something that can be said to be typical of the person with MS?

Here are my findings after exhaustive hours of study (at least 2 or 3—you all know how it goes with exhaustion).

1. The MS sufferer tends to be a person of above average intelligence (or of average intelligence who is able to fake his way to more lofty heights). The average person with MS moreover uses his intelligence in a creative way, having a thirst for the unusual, the genuine. He suffers, after all, from an unusual, very singular sort of illness.




2. He/She is a natural born skeptic, who either does not really believe in the medications he takes but takes them anyway, or does not take them at all, believing that he probably should.




3. The MS sufferer, as a collective body, is perfectly bipolar. That is to say that the collective, corporate body of MS may be seen as a sphere containing two magnetic poles. The suffers rush to either one pole or the other, like tadpoles toward two puddles in a lake that has dried up. This bipolarity will be seen again and again in the individual aspects of the MS personality type.




4. As an example of #3 above, the MS sufferer is either a stoic or a whiner. The former type speaks little of his disease in social or family gatherings (speaking of it, in fact, only if he is asked). The latter brings his disease to all gatherings of every kind and insists that it be swiftly acknowledged, preferably before “hello.”




5. The MS sufferer has either too much of a sense of humor, or no sense of humor at all. He is either an idiot or a curmudgeon. He is either habitually inappropriate or as square as a block of wood.




6. Most people with MS (perhaps 90 percent) can smell bullshit from a mile away.




7. People with MS are fond of animals and bright colors, especially red. They like the sun, they abhor the rain, though both weather conditions cause them to suffer in one way or another.




8. People with MS either grow or wither. They either embrace the disease or live in denial. They either become better people because of MS or they gripe their way through the years until somebody shoots them. Or they shoot themselves. People tend to see MS as either a punishment or a blessing, when in fact it is neither. This is simply bipolarity at work once again.

In Conclusion: I think this study needs more study. We will therefore defer our summary at this time.