Hi everyone, welcome to my new MS blog.  

I want to start off with a quick introduction to myself and my journey.  I am a 44-year-old with an awesome wife and a full house with 5 kids. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada with our sometimes challenging and socialist medical system. Growing up I was rather healthy, other than a weight issue, but I was still active in sports playing organized Hockey and Baseball.  I hit the ball like Babe Ruth. As a centerman in hockey, the defense was unable to move me from my patch of ice in front of their goalie. 

One side note that is very important to everyone reading; growing up I did have serious educational challenges and was diagnosed with a major Learning Disability in written communication.  I am an oral communicator and have always had trouble with written language.  I went to She’arim Hebrew Day School (a school for children with learning disabilities) for my junior high years. In high school, I did all my exams orally in the guidance department office.  This is something I have learned to deal with and overcome, but fair warning: my writing is sometimes a little up and down and can be a little unusual to read.  If you would ever like an explanation or clarification please let me know I would be more than happy to help.  

 I work in the home building industry and have a very physical and active history in construction.  I have been in management for over 20 years but I also have dabbled in home renovations and contracting.  I personally renovated every house I have lived in to the extreme including bathrooms, kitchens, and full basement finishing.  I have thousands of dollars worth of tools that I use and, if I do say so myself, I am very good with (I have more power tools and MS stories to tell at a later time).  

Before my diagnosis, life was going very well for me and my family.  We had decided to delay our plans for making Aliyah to Israel because of a huge upgrade at work and we had just purchased a home for our growing family to move into.  

Everything was going well and on track and then on April 28, 2010, my world started to change. I woke up in the morning with numbness and tingling in my body from my waist down.  Everything from my toes, feet, ankles, legs, knees, up to my waist, all made daily activities challenging. Being very headstrong and stubborn, my first response was to “walk it off”.  Well, after a week that wasn’t working so I went to the doctor.  That began the long path to figure it all out. 

11 years later I can now say that was “the best day of my life”.  My life changed forever and I had to change with it.  I went through all the stages of recovery; shock, fear, questioning, anger, guilt, depression, more questioning, and a few others before I started on healing and growing.  The final stages of healing and growing made me a better person. I now have more clarity on life, relationships, family, and goals.  

There are lots of stories and notes to share about the entire journey but most of them are for another time.  I do want to share the two most important occurrences that helped me with my full recovery, though.  During my diagnosis process of trying to figure out what the issue was with my legs, I found myself in an MRI machine in Buffalo NY.  Funny enough the clinic was named “Canada MRI”.   After about 30 minutes in the machine, my first MRI ever, I was getting a little anxious and my mind was starting to run away from me. 

I will never forget the exact memory in full clarity. At the clinic, you can listen to music during the loud MRI to help calm patients down and they had me listening to a local Buffalo music station 102.5fm. The song playing in my ears was a song from an old Toronto band I was very familiar with.  I am not a big music person but some things you never forget.  I was lying there in this very loud machine, listening to the banging and humming when my mind wandered to what my future might look like.  

When getting a head and neck MRI you have to lie perfectly still with your head in a cage with shims holding it perfectly still.  I started to think about my family and my kids and what life would be like if the MRI found dreaded white spots in the myelin of my brain.  Like a good Jewish parent I started thinking about my kids and their eventual weddings.  At the time I had four children, 2 boys, and two girls. My oldest was an 8-year-old boy and my youngest was a 2-year-old boy. I started thinking about my older son’s wedding and I was picturing my younger son pushing me in circles in a wheelchair trying to dance the best I could with my older son, drool dripping from my deformed mouth. 

 At the time I didn’t know a lot about MS and I had made the mistake of turning to google to find out more.  Google is the worst place to look for information because you always end up finding the worst-case scenario.  I thought MS was inevitably going to leave me crippled in a wheelchair without proper use of my body.  At that point, I started to tear up.  

I have a question for you: what do you do when you start to tear up?  You usually wipe it away.  I couldn’t; I was lying on my back with my head clamped down with a tear starting to run down my face towards my ear.  I could feel the lone teardrop slowly running down the side of my face towards my ear and there was nothing I could do about it.  I laid there in agony feeling the teardrop slowly evaporate from my face in a sad depressed state about my future.  That moment and feeling would stick with me for the rest of my life.  That feeling of the tear slowly evaporating still sends shivers down my spine when thinking about it today.  

That MRI led to my diagnosis when they found about 30 white spots in my head.  My common response to medical personnel since that first MRI when I get the reports is, “How many rocks did you find in my head?” 

Fast forward one week to the day from my MRI, I went to my neurologist’s office and got the MRI report.  After I got my report I had the painful task of telling my parents that their son had a chronic neurological disease, but that’s a whole other long story for another time. 

My mom informed me that we have a cousin that is a neurologist that specializes in MS.  I had no clue.  For the sake of this public writing, let’s call her Dr. Frank.  My mother called Dr. Frank and gave Frank my number and set up a time for us to chat.  As it turns out that day was also the first day that we had closed on our new house and I had 16 guys at the house starting my elaborate renovations.  I was there with the guys working at the house when Dr. Frank called.  I needed a quiet place to talk and concentrate on this important conversation since I was still rather uneducated on my new diagnosis.  I went outside and sat on the fireplace curb foundation between my new house and next-door neighbor’s house.  It was pouring rain outside but that didn’t bother me, it was better getting drenched than having a lone teardrop drying on my cheek.  

Dr. Frank told me the most important thing I ever heard: he said don’t believe what you read on the internet. You can lead a very normal productive life with MS and lots of other illnesses.  “You can’t raise money by showing off the person doing well with MS, you need to wheel out the patient in the wheelchair and show the worst extreme to raise money for the sickness”.  Dr. Frank just relayed to me the exact vision that I had about myself in the future. She then told me about how you can lead a very happy healthy life while dealing with MS.  Mind blown, all my thoughts about me and my illness since April 28th were blown out of the water.  

There is still so much to talk about and we will get there over time but for now, please remember: a positive attitude, no matter how hard it is, is the most important thing to focus on.  For now, take care of yourself, your mental well-being and we will blog together again soon.