BLUFFTON, S.C. () March is Multiple Sclerosis awareness month, and though the month is wrapping up, local health professionals are hoping that awareness can be spread year-round.

According to the National MS Society, almost 1 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Dr. Meredith Mitchell, a practicing OB/GYN in the Lowcountry is one of those, as she was diagnosed just 2 years ago.

Dr. Mitchell pointed out a couple of different signs that she noticed before her diagnosis.

“I felt like my legs just felt very weak, like they were having a hard time holding me up and I  had a hard time writing.  My hands were working normally otherwise, but when I would tried to write, it didn’t work very well.”

She said these symptoms, along with others like pain or loss of vision, fatigue, brain fog, and numbness, are most common with the neurologic disease and autoimmune disorder.

“It’s one of those families of diseases where your immune system attacks itself and more specifically, your immune system attacks your nerve cells,” said Dr. Mitchell.

When her symptoms came on, doctors thought they were warning signs of something else.

“They immediately started working me out for a stroke because some of the symptoms overlap with stroke symptoms,” said Dr. Mitchell. “One of the tough things with multiple sclerosis is that it can take years sometimes for people to get diagnosed because the symptoms can be overlapping with other things or be somewhat vague.”

Though she said she was lucky her symptoms came on suddenly while she was working at the hospital, it was still an uncertain moment for her future.

“One of the first things I did when I was diagnosed was, I looked up, ‘Can I be a doctor with MS?’ I have a tough job. I work long hours on my feet, and it can be very stressful.” said Dr. Mitchell.

But with modern medicine, she explained that there are many different treatments to help ease the disease symptoms.

As a doctor, but also an avid runner, she explained that a diagnosis to this extent doesn’t mean you have to stop doing the physical things you love.

“I ran a marathon in January. I ran an ultra-marathon in October,” said Dr. Mitchell. “I am slower than I used to be. I don’t run as fast as I did two years ago before I was diagnosed, but I feel like that’s even more reason to encourage people, just because you may be the last person to finish a race or you aren’t doing things that the people around you are doing or things that even you used to do yourself doesn’t mean that you can’t do that.”