Depression stalks those with MS

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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

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By MICHAEL VALPY

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

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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.