This year, like hundreds of other Manitobans with MS, Kathleen Olson became one of them.

Just over a year ago, CTV’s W5 investigative journalism series put a glaring spotlight on an Italian vascular surgeon, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, and
the incredible results he reported in MS patients after the “liberation

procedure,” a simple angioplasty to force open narrowed veins in the

neck and chest.

Olson, who has walked with a cane since 1999, still remembers the day the show aired. “I sat down, put my head between my knees, and took a
deep breath,” she says. “I saw the sun shining clearly for the first

time in nearly 30 years.”

In 1982, when she was just 24 years old and working her way through nursing school, Olson learned she had MS. At first, she went years
between MS attacks; now, every day is a battle against the numbing

exhaustion that is typical of MS.

For the single mom of a teen boy, those hurdles add up. Life isn’t unbearable now, Olson says. But it might be. “It feels like my world is
getting smaller and smaller,” she sighs, a week before hopping on a

plane to Albany, N.Y., to be tested and, maybe, treated for what Zamboni

dubbed chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI.

Since CCSVI blew up in the headlines, Manitoba’s government and medical experts have urged caution while research comes in; there are
still no clinical trials here. But there are patients, tired of

patience, hopping planes in the hopes that the simple procedure will

halt the progress of a disease sometimes too awful to bear.

Duncan Thornton, the co-founder of the advocacy group CCSVI Manitoba, estimates since he became the first Manitoban to be “liberated” in
March, as many as 100 Manitobans have dropped tens of thousands of

dollars to receive the procedure in Poland, India, the United States and

elsewhere.

When they come back, their stories have helped impact the debate. “In the beginning of August… there was really compelling anecdotal evidence
of people seeing positive results,” Manitoba Health Minister Theresa

Oswald recalls. “Listening to these very articulate individuals who have

had in their view very profound changes, that compelled us to

articulate at the national level (that) we can’t just sit back.”

By then, Oswald had been wrestling with the CCSVI issue for over eight months. Meeting frequently with doctors and unstoppable MS patient
advocates, Oswald now says she was always on-board with the theory, if

cautious.

And as a new year is upon us, only one thing is certain for the future of MS patients in Manitoba: if the trials don’t come, the
patients may just keep hopping on planes, bound for somewhere else.

http://liberationtreatmentccsvi.com/2010/12/army-of-affected-advocates-continues-to-grow/