On June 10, 2005, I heard the words, “You have MS.” I was twenty-eight years old, numb from the waist down, terrified, and completely unprepared for what came next. I remember the fear most of all. The way it wrapped around everything. I was afraid I’d never walk again, afraid that I’d end up in … Read more
When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, my mind drifted back to a memory I hadn’t thought about in years. It was the spring of 1980, and I was just four years old. That was the year my Aunt Loretta passed away, she was the first person I ever lost. Loretta Cavallo was born on … Read more
The conference room buzzed with tension. We were three days into a company summit in Sacramento, five round tables filled with team members hunched over laptops and printed documentation, hashing out our customer onboarding process. Papers rustled, pens tapped against notepads, and someone let out an audible sigh of frustration. What was supposed to be … Read more
Gerard and I were back at our usual lunch spot, sandwiches from Al’s, the window open to the noise of State Street, when he set his phone down on the desk between us and hit play on a grainy clip of a man in a red and blue checkered shirt sitting alone at a table … Read more
Multiple sclerosis has been compared to an iceberg because 90 percent of the disease activity may be hiding under the surface and not visible to the naked eye. This is especially true with cognition and fatigue. If your energy levels are low or your memory becomes foggy, doing even simple daily chores and activities can … Read more
Many of you have read my previous article about how a denied insurance authorization led me to an MS relapse, rendering me nonfunctional on my right side. As it turned out, MRI studies revealed that I had two new active lesions on my brain and one on the right side of my cervical spine that … Read more
Last year at this time I wrote about how small changes can make a big difference in the New Year. Some of the advice from that post included: developing a financial plan, changing eating habits, exercising, getting back on your schedule and setting attainable goals. I used this advice to make major changes in my … Read more
In September of 2010, I was faced with a devastating decision. I was experiencing severe spinal stenosis and a fractured C6 vertebra, which my doctors believed was a result of complications due to my initial onset of transverse myelitis five years earlier. My decision was to have an emergency cervical fusion to address the problem … Read more
Having a chronic illness, like multiple sclerosis, can be lonely and isolating. Sometimes it is hard to talk to your loved ones because, try as they might, they just don’t understand what you are going through. Before the internet, in order to find other people with similar circumstances, one would have to go out and … Read more
Some of us are born to do certain things in life. James Frederic “Jimmie” Heuga was born to ski. Jimmie began competitive skiing at age five and appeared in a Warren Miller film at age nine. In 1958, Jimmie became the youngest man ever to make the US Ski Team. In 1963, he won the … Read more