Celebration as mysterious as disease of MS

MS Awareness Week is getting as confusing as the disease multiple sclerosis.

Over on the National Multiple Sclerosis site, it is March 2-8. A lot of media sites are writing about the week, including a blogger in New York who uses the occasion to share her MS diagnosis. (She includes a few books she's read since A Shelf Life blog is about MS.)

But then I get an email notice that "National Multiple Sclerosis(MS) Awareness Week is March 15-21." It's on PR Newswire, which cites ProLine Communications as the source. The real focus of the release is how those with MS can build and manage a small business.

"In recognition of National MS Awareness Week, we are proposing a program that will offer practical start-up advice, life wisdom, and inspiration from small-business owners who are also coping with medical adversity."

You can read about a couple of businesses that were started by folks with MS. Not much on MS, though.

There is more on MS over on the MS Foundation site, which declares all of March as MS Awareness and Education Month. It's a part of a campaign to raise the visibility of MS. As the foundation says:

"More than 450,000 people in the United States have MS. Can you tell who they are? Often, even doctors find it difficult to diagnose this chronic, unpredictable illness. Its symptoms may seem to come and go and many are invisible. Fatigue, vertigo and cognitive changes, along with depression, bladder and bowel problems, and sexual dysfunction all are commonly experienced by people with MS, but known only to them."

By the way, lots of folks write about MS and their lives with MS. Start reading at the Carnival of MS Bloggers, which will lead you to a lot of blogs on MS for real awareness of the "now you see it, now you don't" disease of mine.