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As much as I hate to admit it, multiple sclerosis had me running scared. 

Refueling after the Highland Festival 5K

In the weeks leading up to the Alma Highland Festival held over Memorial Day weekend I was soooo afraid of falling. I guess the “Friday Night Incident on Mission Street” in late March had cut me deeper than the incident-instigated five-stitch gash on my forehead.

On that infamous Friday night, it was just supposed to be an easy training run. Nice weather. New running shoes. Bruce Springsteen’s recent release on my iPod. A different route celebrating spring’s return. 

Less than two miles into my run I ventured beyond the friendly confines of the Central Michigan University campus and onto the sidewalks and parking lots along Mount Pleasant’s busy Mission Street. Trucks and cars congested the street’s four lanes. People on their way home from work. Families on their way out to dinner. Friends on their way out for the night.

I still hope nobody saw me as I ran past Sherwin Williams in the strip mall across from Walgreen’s. My left foot clipped the crack where the parking lot met the sidewalk.

It’s bizarre to say it happened so quickly I had no time to react, yet at the same time I remember thinking countless thoughts during this split second, “You gotta be kidding me. I clipped the sidewalk and I’m gonna fall. I sure hope this doesn’t hurt. Man, there’s a lot of traffic and how graceful do I look? Don’t flail, Dan. Fall. But for God’s sake don’t flail. It’ll look so uncool.”  

BAM! My head, throttled by the momentum of my modest pace, smacked into the pavement. Truly face first. Lying prostrate on the cold concrete I remember staring at a loose stone as the sting from the fall set into my skin and consciousness.  I then shot up as quickly as I fell. “Nothing to see here, folks. I’m OK,” I thought as dime-sized drops of blood splashed onto the sidewalk and my new shoes. I turned off my iPod. Not now, Bruce. I think I hurt myself.  

It’s as though my forehead, left shoulder and left pinky broke my fall and protected my legs, which was good because it ended up being a really long walk home. I’m grateful I was wearing a long-sleeved red shirt that night to camouflage the crimson mess I continually wiped off my forehead. One college student stopped me to see if I was OK. “Does it look as bad as I think it does,” I asked him as he offered to call me a cab to get me home and to the emergency room. I appreciated his offer, but all I wanted was to get home to Jennifer. She’d make everything better.

Finally. Home. Jennifer all but started crying at the shock of it all. So did I. We spent nearly four hours at the ER, where medical professionals stitched my head, wrapped my knuckles and X-rayed my poor left pinky. They said it was fine, but I still think I broke it.

Certainly this wasn’t the first time I had fallen while running, but it was the first time in a long time it had happened. Was it my MS? After all, because of MS, as I get tired my left side gets a little weaker and I start dragging my left foot. This is why the last thing Jennifer always tells me before I go running is, “Pick up your feet.”

I was out running just three days after I fell. I seemed to be moving quite well. That is, until I entered my first 5K race of the season. It was hosted by the CMU Physical Therapy Student Organization and coincidentally benefitted the National MS Society. I fell in the middle of the race. Again, my left foot clipped a raised crack in the sidewalk. Even though I scuffed my knuckles in the fall, I protected my head and finished the race in an OK time.

Two falls in less than a month. Was my MS getting worse? Was it time to back off on running?

At the end of the race Jennifer glared at my scuffed knuckles and declared, “‘You need to get rid of those shoes. I’m going to buy you some different ones this afternoon. It’s not the MS. It’s those damn shoes!” Excellent point, Detective Digmann. In the six times I had worn these new shoes, this marked the second time that I fell. So we went to Runners and bought some new shoes.

And while I hoped the newer new shoes would be my saving grace, my fear of falling had me running scared. Case in point: Two weeks later in my second 5K of the season – Central Michigan Community Hospital’s Run-a-Trail – I finished in 26:44, more than two minutes slower than my 24:06 mark in the same race just a year ago.

I just couldn’t shake the fear. Training runs. Running hills. Speed training. I didn’t want to fall. But I was starting to feel some pressure. The Highland Festival was a mere three weeks away and it was at the festival’s 5K race last year that I ran my overall personal record of 23:19. Somebody help me!

The night before the race, I shared my fears with Jennifer. and through our conversation she helped me to realize three things:

• The first was that I had every reason to be scared

• The second was that if I held back in my running so I wouldn’t fall, that’s precisely why I would fall

So I went out the next morning and I ran hard, never once thinking about falling despite the steady rain and wet course. I finished in 24:41; placing seventh out of 15 in my age group. I needed that.

Posting a good finish? It's about time.

Oh yeah, and the third thing I realized the night before the race? I needed to remember and embrace the Japanese Proverb that had helped me through the earliest months of my life with MS:

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”

tuesday morning, i slayed my first dragon.

to understand what i mean by this i need to share with you some of my background: right around may 24 i will begrudgingly celebrate a bitter anniversary of sorts. it will mark seven years since i last walked. you’d think since it has been such a long time, phrases like “i’m going to run to the store” or “let’s go for a walk around the neighborhood” would have slowly worked their way out of my lexicon. but no, i say phrases like these just about every day. that’s just me … a little blind to my disability maybe. or just not hypersensitive to it. these little untruths are not malicious. they are just, well, part of my charm.

keeping that in mind, i’ll explain that the dead dragon from tuesday is because i went swimming. just as dragons insight fear in some, swimming was my fear. so on tuesday, i stared down that beast and i went swimming.

“swimming?” you ask. well, you bet ‘cha!

all smiles after swimming

okay to me swimming is merely me standing in the swimming pool. it is not the breaststroke or the butterfly. for me right now, swimming has become a humungous process.

a process that requires the help of three people. well, four if you count the pool lifeguard (i.e. the lift operator). gone are the days of slipping on my suit and diving right in.

the process starts when i ask my husband, dan, to help me put on my suit. we carefully and momentarily stand to adjust it. then he helps me put on a sweatshirt, which serves as a cover-up, and finally some shoes. then, dan passes me off to my caregivers, ellie & jim. who drive me to the very accessible pool facility in central michigan university’s student activity center. ellie escorts me to the locker room. where she takes off my cover-up and shoes, hands me my towel and i’m one step closer to taking my swim. oops! see what i mean? i neither step nor swim. again, part of my charm :-) 

once i’m on the pool deck, jim transfers me from my wheelchair to the university’s hoyer lift-type thing. and now the lifeguard pushes me, buckled into my seat, close to the water. swimming is so close! he slowly lowers me down, i can smell the chlorine and feel the chilly water on my toes. brrr … finally, i’m submerged up to my chest. time to unbuckle me. oh the water, how refreshing!!

jim floats me over to the stairs, i’ll use the handles to stand. sorry, no miraculous stair climbing in my future. just standing.

okay, wait. I’m standing! how amazing is that? because of the water, i’m buoyant and seemingly light as a feather. and for the next 15 minutes, i stand. yes, there are occasional breaks where i just float. for me to stand, jim and ellie have to push on my knees to lock them for stability. but once my knees are locked, they let me go and i’m standing all by myself.

jim, me and ellie

as i start to get tired and remember that i don’t want to overdo it, i ask jim and ellie to strap me back into the chair, which lifts me up and out of the water (i quietly make a promise to myself that i will swim again this summer). jim transfers me back into my wheelchair, ellie towels me off and we rush home so i can finally go to the bathroom! unfortunately the pool is accessible, but the locker room not so much.

so i went swimming, which is one dragon down. now i have two more i need to overcome. and i’m looking forward to telling you all about them when i finally slay those dragons.

Never again will Jennifer and I be able to tell this story about our experiences in the days leading up to and during the 2009 Walk MS. Our backyard and house were converted into a movie set of sorts, complete with a director, cameraman, lights, cameras and a sunlight reflector thingy you see on many outdoor Hollywood sets. Not to mention that on several occasions, a neighbor passing by could have heard the words: “And … action!” echoing across the yard.

i felt like such a star! i have what i consider a pretty ordinary life. it’s a good life, but it’s ordinary … i’m just living. but for two days i had cameras pointing at me, a director asking me questions and people caring about what i had to say. and it felt amazing!

We’re still humbled and overwhelmed by the fact that we were one of three nationwide winners in the Acorda Therapeutics “I Walk Because” podcast contest. Acorda is one of the Walk MS sponsors and through its “I Walk Because” campaign was looking people with MS to tell their story — in their own words — about why they walk and what Walk MS means to them.

to find these people, acorda launched a nationwide contest inviting all walk ms registrants to submit a 30 second video about why they should be chosen to tell their story. the winners will tell their story as part of a video series that soon will be broadcast on Acorda’s ”I Walk Because” web site.

We felt that because we’re married and both are living with MS, we’d have a great story to share. Fortunately through the video we made (thanks Cynthia and Wes!), Acorda did too.

After the walk with Joe and Darren

in our winning video submission i say that i walk because i can’t walk and want to make sure dan always can, and dan says that he walks because he can and that hopefully through our effort with walk ms, someday I might be able to walk again. awwww. it was very sweet!

This theme carried through into the on-camera conversations we had in our video shoot, and we are soooo excited to see what Joe (the director), Darren (the skateboarding cameraman) and the production crews with StudioPMG and Acorda Therapeutics put together! They got everything from interviewing us and getting footage here at home to following us and members of our team – Team MonsterS – at the walk in Frankenmuth.

we’re hoping the final podcast will be posted for the whole world to see within the next several weeks.

And when it’s posted, all the readers who subscribe to our blog will be the first to know!

Jennifer and Dan

So Jennifer and I are sitting here still reeling from a flurry of weekend Walk MS events. Certainly, participating in the MS walk to increase awareness about multiple sclerosis and raise money to support MS research and programs is an annual event we look forward to every year.

we were all smiles on walk day

but even though this was the seventh year we’ve walked together with team MonsterS at the walk in frankenmuth, this was unlike anything we’ve ever done before. first of all, it isn’t every year the national ms society asks me to be a power partner and say a few words at the starting line, umm no pressure! 

Jennifer, still shocked by the PowerPartner sign featuring her photo and story, talking with Joe from StudioPMG at the Walk MS starting line.

Jennifer did an incredible job as a Power Partner getting the walkers fired up and convincing them that the early morning rain was going to stop.

and i promised the walkers that there would be no need for umbrellas

And if Jennifer was feeling any pressure addressing the thousands of people at the walk, she didn’t show it. I imagine she, like me, had gotten used to being watched. After all, we had just spent the day before the walk with a two-man production crew from StudioPMG in Irvine, California, who were interviewing us and getting footage for our Acorda Therapeutics national contest winning podcast.

darren and joe are two of the nicest guys we’ll ever meet and we are so looking forward to seeing what they develop for the podcast that soon will appear on acorda’s “I walk because” web site. they continued following us at the walk – joe on foot with his digital camera and darren on skateboard (!) with his video camera – filming us and asking more questions. not to be forgotten was ryan, a modern day kato from the pink panther, hiding amongst trees and on bridges taking our picture for a photo story he’s developing for the local newspaper.

While the media attention was an exciting one-of-a-kind element of our walk experience this year, the continued support of our family and friends is what made this last weekend’s event as meaningful as ever for us. There’s something indescribably humbling about the amount of support we receive from our loved ones for the walk as well as throughout each day of the year.

We’re looking forward to showing you pictures and telling you more details about these Walk MS 2009 experiences in the next week or so. Check back with us here soon!

Dan and jennifer