All this hype surrounding the University of Michigan potentially naming Jim Harbaugh as its new football coach got me thinking about my Multiple Sclerosis.
No really, it did. Follow this train of thought that logically connects one of my biggest regrets to the Wolverines and their 1997 college football national championship. My story goes a little something like this:
I’ve always been a daddy’s girl, and as such, I went to Michigan football games with my dad. The Maize and Blue always has been in my dad’s family. His father/my grandfather played for the Wolverines baseball team in the late 1930s and, well, U of M athletics essentially is part of our DNA.
Because of Grandpa Steve and my dad, I heard more stories about the rivalry between Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler and Ohio State coach Woody Hayes than most other little girls ever cared or wanted to hear. But I couldn’t hear enough about, and eventually couldn’t see enough of, the battles at Michigan’s “Big House.”
Throughout my teenage years, I sat through the warm and freezing temperatures for all the Michigan home games, standing through every “Hail to the Victors,” celebrating every win, and feeling the pain of my dad’s rivalry-inspired comment, “Oh, how I hate Ohio State” each time the Buckeyes won, even when it wasn’t against our Wolverines.
Call it a hunch, or “Go Blue” intuition, but I knew the 1997 season was going to be one of legend.
Each Saturday home game, my dad, brother, BF Johanna and I drove down U.S. 23 from Flint to Ann Arbor to tailgate with chips and turkey sandwiches made by my mom. We’d then head into the Big House and cheer on U of M stars like quarterback Brian Griese and eventual Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson. They were winning their way toward a national championship, which essentially was decided on November 22 in the final home game of the season against the dreaded Buckeyes.
I never made it to the game.
Less than 10 days before it, I was struggling with double vision and numbness in my hands and feet. Those complaints led a series of physicians to determine that I was living with Multiple Sclerosis.
When my neurologist said, “It looks like you definitely have MS,” I was somewhat relieved, as previous discussions with the doctors hinted that the possible cause of my symptoms could be a brain tumor. So as I processed that I had been diagnosed with MS, I looked at him and asked, “Does this mean I can’t go to next week’s Michigan game?”
Aghast, he looked at me and strongly advised against it, citing the realities of what I now would be living with. Among his concerns were the extreme cold temperatures outside and the amount of energy it was going to take to make it to the game. All these had the potential to exacerbate my symptoms.
And so, I stayed home and watched the game on TV, missing out on personally witnessing the celebratory game where my beloved No. 1-ranked Wolverines topped the No. 4-ranked Buckeyes to secure a spot in the Rose Bowl and eventual share of the national title. Sure, I watched it live on TV, but it wasn’t the same. 
Nothing ever was going to be the same. I now was living with MS.
I sit here now some 17 years later, and I live with a regret that I never tried to make it to that game. Without giving myself a chance, I let MS decide my actions for me and I wonder whether I could have managed everything that day. In reality it probably was the right decision for me at the time, yet looking back, it’s always easy to wonder, “What if …”
That’s one thing I did take away from that experience, and I never want to look back at missed opportunities and have those same after-thoughts. It’s interesting to note that my husband, Dan, had a similar experience when he opted out of a planned mission trip to El Salvador with his church shortly after he was diagnosed with MS.
We learned our lessons and confidently move forward in spite of our MS. We greatly respect the disease, but believe in ourselves more and won’t let it take more from us than it deserves. Had we not learned such lessons, we likely never would have written our book; pursued our graduate degrees; or this past year made trips to speak in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Louisville, and Waverly, Iowa.
I realize Harbaugh wasn’t a part of the 1997 national championship University of Michigan team, but I remember when he was the quarterback of the Wolverines through the mid-1980s. And as the pigskin prognosticators are predicting he has the potential to return Michigan to its storied level of greatness, which made me realize that I am achieving my own levels of greatness.
Not that I owe it all to the University of Michigan’s football program, but it certainly had a hand in motivating me to live an MS life without regrets.
No regrets.
And as always, “Go Blue!”