When she started to feel the numbness in her legs return and her fatigue grow, Michelle Walsh had a gut feeling about the cause.

Five months earlier, in July 2010, she had travelled to Bulgaria for the "liberation" treatment, where doctors used small balloons to open up narrowed veins in her neck. Walsh's wildest dreams were realized when her multiple sclerosis symptoms abated -her mobility improved so much that the wheelchair she'd been fitted for was left to gather dust.

After living with MS for 18 years, Walsh was familiar with its nature. The most common form -relapsing-remitting -is characterized by "attacks" followed by periods of relative quiet. Just before she decided to go to Bulgaria, Walsh's diagnosis had advanced from relapsing-remitting to secondary progressive, where the periods of remission disappear and symptoms worsen more quickly.

Her husband and mother were the first to notice when Walsh's symptoms returned in the fall. It didn't take long for Walsh, 37, to notice, too.

"When I had some tingles come back in my legs, some numbness, I waited it out for three weeks or so, and then when they didn't subside, I kind of knew something was up," Walsh said this week from her farm near Beechy. "I knew in the pit of my stomach something was up. But I waited it out, and then my fatigue was starting to be affected again. I was tired like I was before I had the first treatment."

Having closely followed the explosion in the number of clinics offering vein-widening procedures for MS patients, Walsh knew she didn't have to fly across the Atlantic ocean again. She zeroed in on Pacific Interventionalists in California, and on Jan. 14 was one of three Saskatchewan residents to be treated there, travelling with Watson McGregor of Rosetown and Lyle Vindeg of Saskatoon.

The trip to Bulgaria cost $15,000. Walsh said the decision to spend another $10,000 ($8,000 for the procedure, plus travel and accommodation costs) to go to the U.S. was an easy one.

"It wasn't a difficult decision -hard on the bank account, yes -but it wasn't a difficult decision for myself or my husband," Walsh said. "He just said, 'No, we need to do this for you, because I've seen how this has helped you. And if this helps you again, it's worth every penny. Even though we don't have it sitting in our bank account, we'll find it somewhere.' "

On Jan. 14, doctors at the Pacific Interventionalists office took another look at the veins in Walsh's neck using MRV (magnetic resonance venography) and confirmed they had narrowed again. Within hours, they had performed a venous angioplasty, widening the veins using a modified technique that would hopefully reduce the chance of them collapsing again.

Like before, Walsh feels a million times better. She still knows she isn't cured and there's a chance her veins will narrow again. Asked if she regretted the trip to Bulgaria, Walsh said knowing what she knows now, she'd advise others to go somewhere closer to home. But she doesn't regret her decisions.

"No, I don't. If I wouldn't have gone, who knows how much my MS would have progressed while I was waiting. I was given my quality of life back much earlier."