“I had not had a brain freeze in four years,” she said. “I kept getting ice water to try and get another.”

For the past several years, Thomas endured the slow breakdown of her body due to multiple sclerosis. It’s left her in a wheelchair. Screwed
up her senses. Some things, she could not feel at all. Others, like

anything hot, could cause her muscles to spasm violently.

Unwilling to wait for clinical trials for a possible MS treatment to be completed, Thomas did what thousands of others have done — she went
to another country for help.

Called “liberation treatment” by patients, the procedure is still being studied in Canada and is not approved for use here. It treats
chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI. The Italian doctor

Paolo Zamboni believes reduced blood flow in the brain because of CCSVI

may be associated with MS, an illness that attacks the brain and spinal

cord.

Zamboni’s idea is that CCSVI could cause an iron overload in the brain and spinal cord, causing MS. Through angioplasty, a procedure that
expands obstructed veins with a balloon, he says the condition of MS

patients can be improved.

In about 40% of patients, the veins eventually return to their previous condition. Some surgeons will put a stent in the vein to keep
it expanded, a procedure Zamboni doesn’t recommend.

Thomas spent months researching the procedure and despite the questions, flew south for the operation on her own dime. It cost her
about $18,000 to visit a clinic in Clearwater, Fla. earlier this month.

Some of the money she came up with herself and the rest she collected

through fundraisers, including more than $2,000 donated from the

Thompson Products Employee Association.

“I was originally going to Albany, N.Y. but the waiting list was until the spring and I wasn’t going to wait that long,” she said. “So I
went to Clearwater, who could get me in this month.”

The liberation procedure involved day surgery, she said, and within a few days of it she began to notice differences in her body. Like the
brain freeze.

“I couldn’t get those” before undergoing the treatment, said Thomas, who returned home Tuesday. “I would feel nothing.”

Within a week, she says her fatigue, a common symptom of MS, faded away. Most shocking, she said, was the change in her legs.

“Normally when I get into bed, someone helps me straighten my legs out,” she said. “I did it on my own. I couldn’t believe it. It’s
working. This is not the placebo effect.”

Thomas did not get a stent put in her neck, unlike 35-year-old Mahir Mostic of St. Catharines, who died Oct. 16 from complications stemming
from the operation at a Costa Rican clinic.

“It doesn’t worry me at all,” said Thomas, who said she would have gotten the stent if her surgeon had recommended it. “If you do your
research and set up your care at home, you’ll be OK.”

Given that she feels her body is responding, Thomas wants the government to move faster to approve the treatment.

“Don’t wait for the double-blind studies. That’s not fair,” she said.

“There are thousands of people who have had this done. Study us. Follow our progress. We need to do this now.”

http://liberationtreatmentccsvi.com/2010/11/ms-patient-wants-faster-government-action/