The Long Walk

I just walked 200 yards without a cane! This is remarkable, considering what happened to me in 2013. Summer through winter, my brainstem and motor cortex was attacked by extremely aggressive MS. Those attacks had me in, out, and back into a wheelchair during multiple cycles of muscle-spasming agony, vision disruption, incontinence, invasive stopgap treatments, fear, anger and frustration. I could not walk, drive or work during most of that time. Signals just were not getting from my brain to my body properly. It was like I was a car with fouled spark plugs and a corroded, shorting out distributor. My engine was hard to start, and tough to keep going.

It's now been one and a half months since I completed HSCT treatment. The inflammation has been stopped, and I feel so much better. I'm back working, driving, walking without assistance, seeing clearly, living independently, and not taking any MS drugs. To help affirm that I'm not just fooling myself, I visited my new neurologist last week. She ran me though all the tests she did back in December and compared her notes. I am her fist patient to actually go through HSCT. She was amazed at my mobility and sensory improvements, and that I no longer take any drugs to treat MS, pain or muscle spasms. I hope to work with her to spread the word about HSCT so that other MS patients may benefit from this life-saving procedure.

Despite my promising results so far, HSCT isn't an instant-healing miracle. Getting out of bed or standing up out of a chair is still a challenge. I tend to need a cane in the morning, but by afternoon, I don't need it. If other patients who have done this before me are any guide, I should be doing significantly better five months from now.  To ensure that happens, I'll be starting physical therapy soon. The miracle will happen slowly. I just have to keep believing and work for it.

And though it is too early to do so yet, I'm starting to think about donating my mobility assistance devices to the MS society. My collection includes an electric wheelchair, a nursing home wheelie walker and a cane.  And the manual wheelchair borrowed from Goodwill, the one my friend Doug helped me acquire to get my crippled butt through the airports and to Chicago, I will return with a new wheel that no longer pops off whenever it catches a ridge in the pavement. Even worse than being disabled in a wheelchair is having a wheelchair that's also afflicted. Hopefully the next user will have an easier time.