MS Gallery − Fred
“I have made great strides in getting my life back together. The dreams that I thought were lost are becoming a reality. My motto now is: One Life…One Chance…One Hope.”
Fred
Age: 43
Hometown: Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Onset of symptom: 1985
First symptoms experienced: Numbness and tingling
Diagnosed: 1987
Started treatment: 1987
After living with MS for 20 years, Fred can’t stress strongly enough the importance of getting diagnosed and treated early. “I have done well in managing the disease – from being unable to walk, unable to talk, to the point where I am now parenting my kids and bike riding.”
Fred wasn’t always this positive. Being diagnosed with MS in his 20s, “my outlook was very, very poor. I made an assumption that I would be in a wheelchair. I wouldn’t be able to walk. I wouldn’t be a parent. I wouldn’t have a career.”
In 1985, Fred experienced numbness and tingling in his legs while attending his sister’s wedding. This was the beginning of a two-year struggle with his symptoms. “I was struggling with my vision, struggling with walking, struggling with not being able to talk.”
Many doctors dismissed his symptoms as stress-related and told him not to worry. One doctor said it was “all in my mind or that there was an emotional basis for my symptoms.” When he was finally diagnosed with MS, he felt it was a mixed blessing – although he had an incurable disease, his condition finally had a name.
His life turned upside down after his diagnosis, however, because he had to stop working and became depressed and withdrawn. But, that all changed when he started a new treatment that helped to control his symptoms and outbreaks.
“Since this time, my life has changed dramatically. I managed to get my life back on track. I went back to school to get a degree in social work and a masters degree in education. I now work full-time in child and adolescent mental health and I love the work I do.”
