In this issue

Inside MS, Spring, 2002 by Martha King

Spring at last!

There's a lot of growing in this issue. Growing flowers, to start with. Hundreds of readers shared their garden joys and heartbreaks with us, and Martha Jablow has assembled some of the best. We stressed the practical issues in our article because the therapeutic value of growing green things is so obvious. Just looking at the photographs, we hope, will make you want to visit your nearest public garden--and perhaps fill that entryway, patio corner, or windowsill with a garden of your own.

Then there's growing older. "Not for sissies," Suzanne Rogers reminds us. But for people with MS, old age can be a surprise. Many senior readers look back on three or four decades with MS and believe they must be quite rare. Rare human beings? We certainly hope so. Rare statistics? It seems not, from the vantage point of our former chief medical officer, Dr. Stanley van den Noort.

Tamar Sherman invites readers to grow bolder--and venture into the wilderness on some of the nation's growing list of accessible trails in state, local, and national parks. These woodland and seashore pathways are hospitable to slow walkers as well as to wheeled mobility devices. And Sister Karen Zielinski invites people to grow more good common sense. Even subtle disabilities such as a slow, uncertain gait can signal "easy prey" to a criminal.

And finally we invite you all to grow smarter, by learning more about the complex system that goes so badly awry in MS. "Immunology for the Rest of Us" may not be the easiest of read--but we hope it will clarify some issues and reward the persistent.

As always, we urge you to call the chapter nearest you if you have questions or concerns. Just dial 1-800-FIGHT-MS (1-800-344-4867) and select Option #1.