I would like to express my appreciation to the CCSVI Locator site and all of its contributors for posting their experiences.  I would especially like to thank Michelle Walsh and Dr. Bill Code for publicizing  the results of their surgeries.  Their information led to my booking the venous angioplasty for my daughter, S,(I will not publish her name, because she is worried about the negative affects to her career if her coworkers know she has MS) with Dr. Arata in Costa Mesa and she had the surgery in March.  It has now been six months and the difference it has made to her life is phenomenal.

S. was diagnosed with MS in 2005, but she had symptoms for years before.  She had many of the debilitating MS symptoms that all MS sufferers have to deal with, but the worst for her was fatigue.  Getting up and getting ready for work each day, would reduce her to tears while riding the bus to work.  Once there she had to depend on drugs, such as Ritalin, to make it through the day.  Home again, she would collapse with out the energy to feed herself.  Weekends were used to rest so she would have the energy to go through the week again.  That was basically her life for all of her twenties.  She had two relapses during that time, each leaving her with more disabilities that would not altogether go away.

After she had her surgery, although she had an immediate improvement in her vision that did not last, it took about 3 weeks before she felt a difference in how she was feeling.  In fact she had come to the conclusion that she was one of the people for which the surgery did not work.  Now she works 10 to 12 hours a day, goes to the gym and then home to the usual chores we all have, unless she has a social outing.  She is able to go out in the evenings and still arrive at work with energy to face what ever the day will bring.  On her 30th birthday she treated herself to a tropical holiday.  She was able to spend her days snorkelling, hiking and kayaking on the ocean as well as enjoying night time entertainments.  She was also able to enjoy the heat and sun.  All of this would have been impossible before the surgery.  The flights alone would have laid her up for a week.

Every day we are thankful for her improvement.  She still has some symptoms to deal with, but is able to handle them and lead a full and active life.  We just pray that she will not have any problems with restenosis, but know that we went to the best doctor to perform the procedure.  We believe that he is always improving his methods and that the more surgeries he performs, the more knowledge will be out there for other doctors to adopt.  We also hope that Canadian doctors will soon come on board and learn from the doctors now doing the surgeries.  It makes MS Patients sound like guinea pigs, but I am sure most of them would happily accept that role if it the treatment made such an extreme improvement to their lives.

My daughter still has MS.  The surgery did not cure her from the disease, but it enabled her to live with it, instead of just existing and losing more and more of her bodily functions.