I Have a Dream...

I love to run. For most of my life, I did not have one intentional exercise I enjoyed. I have to say intentional because, for many of us non-exercisers, we often calculate by-product exercise. You know, "today I burned 200 calories and walked 3 miles shopping Concord Mills Mall!" Or, "I got my exercise babysitting and chasing a 2 year old around my yard." All of this changed about three weeks into my attempt at running. The first weeks were painful, lung-burning, impossible, but, ahhhh, around week 3 something wonderful happened. I no longer woke feeling 101 years old. I hit my runner's high and felt like I could run forever.

Then, I started setting goals. First, the 5K. Done! Why not do a marathon? First, the half. I sat down at the computer with my friend, the trainer, and we looked around the Southeast settling for a half marathon in the fall (13.1 miles)...soon to be followed by the Valentines coup d'etat marathon (26.2 miles). In the best physical fitness of my life, something funky started happening. Running three miles was a walk in the park, but pushing past 5 0r 6 miles set me tingling and spread a bizarre numbness up my right arm. I would pinch myself, and jab the unfeeling area, as if to wake it from slumber. Nothing helped, nothing except cooling off and hydrating....it was May.

Mid-May, my family spent several days at Wrightsville Beach. One day, we walked the mile to the pier and bought ice cream cones, taking them out on the pier to see what was getting caught. I needed to sit down on a bench and waved everyone else on to the end of the pier because of the swaying...my swaying, not the pier. Boy, I was so dizzy, especially looking down at the water below. I had always had a problem with heights, so I chalked it up to fear. On the hot walk back to the condo, Lucas was tired and I carried him the whole way. He weighed considerably less than he does now...at 3 years he was about 50 pounds. My arms were tired when we got back, my right arm was numb, but I am right-handed and most of his weight was on that arm. My mom fussed, saying I shouldn't have carried him so far and that was that. When I cooled off, my arm mostly recovered feeling, but some residual numbness remained, and even after returning home from the beach, it spread up to my shoulder and across the right side of my back. Perhaps, it was time to visit the doctor?

I visited my doctor on Monday and he discussed some possibilities. Lyme, lupus, ms...but said, "You look too healthy!" Amen to that. MRI was scheduled for Thursday. ("BTW, are you claustrophobic?" "Naw." Blog just about that later!) My doc called me Friday to deliver the news...MS. It's the end of the world as we know it.

I cannot explain the feeling of devastation when you hear the news you least expect. I have a fabulous imagination, so the scenarios started running through my head...the worst-case scenarios. The fear grows and grows until you almost cannot function or speak. I have told several people that I believe this kind of diagnosis requires processing like a death...denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. I would add my own to the end, kicking butt.

I continued to have a full-blown episode through the rest of that summer of 2007. The numbness spread over exactly the entire right side of my body, I began having severe nerve pain in both my feet and vertigo. I would heat up like a menopausal woman...a result of the difficulty regulating core body temperature with ms. I began a disease-modifying injection I gave myself every other day. (Good news! I am now no longer afraid of needles;) I began a couple of rounds of oral steroids to reduce the inflammation in my brain that ultimately I needed to avoid to prevent damage to more areas. My husband and kids tried to adjust to our new normal.

I was diagnosed three years ago now, and during that first year, I told my running coach friend that it was time for a new goal. I had spent a great deal of time on the web site for the NMSS, an excellent source for the latest info http://www.nmss.org/, and saw this event called a Challenge Walk. I asked my friend to help me train. And we did. We completed our first 50 mile Challenge Walk in April 2008 with a team of 4. This is the part I was talking about called "kicking butt." After I got thru the stage called Depression, or "I can't do all the things I'd dreamed of doing," I finished up in this Kicking Butt stage. I've only been home a few weeks now from my third Challenge Walk, this year with six other teammates, one of them also with ms. We have raised $28,800 towards a cure that WILL come one day.

And running. Oh, how I love running! As I jumped into my Kicking Butt stage, I saw a great movie, "The Bucket List." I made my own mental list. Not because, as in the movie, I'm kicking the bucket. I made my list because I'm not. Diagnosis of possibly debilitating, chronic disease had a great effect on me. I gained some fearlessness. I will not sit on the sidelines, afraid and regretting. What's left to fear?

Long-range goal? Marathon.




"I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!" Philippians 4:13

"I probably should consider this my last marathon, but you never know what'll happen. My friends reminded me that I said that last year and the year before and the year before." Robert Borglund, Winner of Boston Marathon's 80-and-older age group two years in a row