Join the Movement

Yesterday, I participated in the MS Walk around St. Paul and Minneapolis. We walked nine miles to help find a cure for multiple sclerosis. While the weather could have been better, I am never disappointed by the motivation and inspiration I find within each one of these events. This one, however, hit pretty close to home for me and I spent most of the walk thinking how lucky I was and how big of a bullet I actually dodged.

During my senior year of college, I began to have some serious problems with my right shoulder and arm. Originally, the doctors thought that it was due to an old soccer injury that I'd had surgically repaired some years before. But, I began to lose function and sensation in my right hand and arm. So, scans and tests were ordered and they found some abnormalities in my brain. Make all the jokes you want now...back then, it wasn't funny. A doctor told me, somewhat ambivalently, that it looked like I was in the beginning stages of MS.

Over the next two and a half years, I visited every specialist in the State of Minnesota. I went to neurologists, neuropsychiatrists, motor function specialists, physical medicine specialists, physical therapists, orthopedists, and cardiologists. I also underwent just about every test in the book - from MRIs to CT scans, spinal taps to EMGs and EKGs. My blessings became the occasional week where I wasn't scheduled to see any doctors. It was emotionally and physically exhausting for both me and my family. I remember sitting in the waiting room with my mother - waiting to see yet another expert in the field of MS - watching all those who already suffered significantly from the disease and crying because I believed my young, strong body would eventually deny me.

These doctors put me on all different kinds of trial drugs and had me undergo motor function tests to try and figure out the cause of my slowness in response and my lack of sensation. Nothing worked. Eventually, during my second year of law school, I saw a new specialist who looked at all my test results and told me, just as ambivalently as the first doctor had, that he didn't think I had MS.

Just like that.

He referred me to a cardiologist who determined I had thoracic outlet syndrome - a condition where my first and second ribs were too close together and were constricting my thoracic artery, cutting off the circulation to my nerves and causing the loss of sensation in my hand and fingers. So, the doctor removed the rib and I was restored to "normal."

Far be it from me to forget to count my blessings but those two and a half years left me significantly changed and somewhat jaded. Then, my girlfriend Shan - who overcame her own personal battle with cancer - told me that the only thing you can ever truly control is your attitude. I had been so angry at all the doctors who put me through all that testing and who had kept me up at night for two and a half years that I failed to see the blessing in it all. While there are certain blessings which may seem obvious, I was left healthy for a reason.

Yesterday, I felt so inadequate. I raised money, yes...but I got to walk nine miles to show my support for MS research. More importantly, I can walk nine miles. I walked past people in wheelchairs and people who were struggling to make the next step. My body has gotten stronger and it doesn't seem fair. Those people who suffer from the disease motivate me to move faster and farther. They are the people who don't blame their circumstances for their lot in life - the ones who push us to make a change.

Fortune smiles on so many people who fail to appreciate the significance of its gifts. I realized that I had to go through what I did to appreciate all that I have. People can make a change. We just have to realize what we've been given and use it to inspire change in others.
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