Re: Depression stalks those with MS

[Guest guest]

Very inspiring article...thank you

On 1-Nov-04, at 4:14 AM, bills944 wrote:

>

> Depression stalks those with MS

> Mike Augustine has battled the disease's darkness -- and emerged full

> of optimism and humour, MICHAEL VALPY writes

>

> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20040929.HMS29/PPVSto

> ry//?DENIED=1 & brand=

>

> By MICHAEL VALPY

> Wednesday, September 29, 2004  Page - A17  (876 words)  Pay Per View

>      

> Print this Article Print this Article  

>

> Mike Augustine, in his second year at Ontario's Sheridan College

> studying graphic arts and animation, woke one morning in the guest

> room of his girlfriend's parents' home with his feet tingling.

>

> The sensation quickly spread up both legs, into his chest and down

> into his arms and fingers. It was Valentine's Day, 1992. He was 22

> years old. He was terrified.

>

> That was how his multiple sclerosis began. The disease destroys the

> white, fatty protective covering -- called myelin -- of the nerve

> fibres in the brain and spinal cord and results in symptoms ranging

> from numbness and mild cognitive impairment to paralysis and

> incontinence. There is no known cure.

>

> Mr. Augustine is now 35. He is on a disability pension. He depends on

> canes or a wheelchair for mobility. He has had crushing bouts of

> depression. He also is full of optimism for the future. He adores

> , the girlfriend who is now his wife. He is thinking about

> having children -- and he is just one year younger than

> Fariala of Montreal.

>

> Mr. Fariala, afflicted by MS, told a friend in May he wanted to kill

> himself. He succeeded a few days ago, allegedly helped by his mother,

> who has been charged with assisting a suicide.

>

> Mr. Fariala's end-of-life decision has not only revived the debate

> about whether, or how, assisted suicide should be legalized in Canada,

> it has startled and disturbed people familiar with MS, a relentlessly

> progressive, debilitating disease -- but not life threatening.

>

> The life expectancy of people with MS is not much different from that

> of the population as a whole. A spokesperson for the Multiple

> Sclerosis Society of Canada said she had heard of only one sufferer

> committing suicide, and that was several years ago. However, 50 per

> cent of people with MS experience clinical depression.

>

> Mike Augustine has a story about the curse of depression, and how it

> abruptly ended for him.

>

> It was in May, 2000, and he had gone with his family to a strawberry

> festival. His disease was at its worst. His vision was impaired; he

> couldn't see straight. He was having trouble walking. The heat was

> weakening him. He was irritable and grumpy. And to top it all, he

> couldn't get to a portable toilet in time, and he wet his pants.

>

> He told his father to take him home. On the way back to the car, he

> said, he was feeling hateful.

>

> " I was thinking 'Why me? Why am I going through this?' And then I see

> this 10-year-old boy barely four feet tall having to use a walker

> built just for a short, 10-year-old boy. He was barely able to move.

> He was struggling to get through the grass. Yet he had a smile on his

> face because he was at the carnival. He was enjoying himself despite

> the fact it was almost impossible for him to get around.

>

> " And I looked at myself, and said, 'You are a total twit. You had an

> entire childhood to run around and play games, and how many people

> don't have that opportunity? Don't think about what you don't have.

> Think about what you have had, and will have.' "

>

> The story illustrates Mr. Augustine's approach to life. All through

> high school, he had suffered from Tourette's syndrome, an illness

> resulting in jerking movements and compulsive antisocial-type

> behaviour. " I had no social life. " Eventually the illness was

> diagnosed and controlled by medication and he thought his life would

> be normal.

>

> Then came the MS diagnosis. He was forced to leave college. He felt,

> he said, " empty, helpless, very angry, scared and bitter. " He didn't

> consider suicide -- not exactly. He stopped taking his Tourette's

> medicine, he gave up, he decided he would waste away in a room in his

> parents' house and wait for his disease to get worse until he died.

>

> Then found him a job and told him if he wanted her to stay

> in his life he would take it. He did. It was, he said, a fork in the

> road.

>

> Since then, each time his disease has worsened, each time he has a

> relapse, he looks at it as a challenge, a hurdle to jump. At the worst

> moment, he said, he went to the MS Society of Canada and told them: " I

> don't know what to do. I'm scared. I want to get out of this, but I

> don't know what I'm facing and I don't know what avenues are available

> to me. "

>

> He went to all the people they sent him to, doctors, counsellors,

> fellow sufferers. He came through.

>

> Mr. Augustine said he is now on the lip of achieving his dream, to be

> a newspaper comic-strip cartoonist. He has developed a one-panel

> cartoon, which he will soon submit to a publishing syndicate, that

> looks with humour at people's problems.

>

> It is possible he may find a way of capturing one moment in his own

> life, when he tried to introduce his wife to a friend -- and couldn't

> remember her name. She told him. And then he couldn't remember his

> friend's name.

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