EDMONTON - Siobhan MacQueen loves making cookies, and with grandchildren potentially blessing her life, there’s nothing more MacQueen would like to do than to share cookies with them.

But she has multiple sclerosis, a disability that flares up and takes away her ability to perform basic daily tasks.

MacQueen quite willingly accepts her symptoms — the headaches, the depression and the tremors, but she just doesn’t want her MS to get any worse.

So the single mother of four children — only one lives at home — is heading to Costa Mesa, Calif., next week for a controvertial procedure that will hopefully stabilize her situation.

Liberation therapy, otherwise known as chronic cerebro-spinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI), is an alternative treatment for people with MS that was first proposed by Italian physician Paolo Zamboni. It’s based on his theory that MS is not an autoimmune condition but a disease caused by blood flow blockage from the central nervous system and can be treated with surgery.

Zamboni believes when the blood supply from the brain and spine has trouble returning to the heart, MS symptoms surface.

The procedure is being studied in Alberta, but patients who want the proceedure currently need to travel overseas and pay their own way.

MacQueen knows she’s taking a chance, but sometimes a chance is all you have.

“I am not hoping for anything,” she says, in between sips of hot chocolate in a west end coffee shop.

“That way I won’t be disappointed.”

In fact, MacQueen got a big boost from her fellow members of the Irish Club.

A recent silent auction organized by the club raised more than $8,000 — enough to pay for the procedure.

“I knew I had a lot of friends and family, but I didn’t know I had so many,” she says, with a grateful smile.

“So many of them are there for me at the drop of a hat.”

MacQueen’s sister will be traveling with her and then keeping a careful eye on her in their Newport Beach hotel room for two days following the procedure.

“They want me to stay and rest for a couple of days after the procedure to make sure everything is OK,” she says.

MacQueen was first diagnosed with MS in 1995 after she woke up one morning with tingling in her right arm.

She was an on-the-go young mother with an office job who loved playing soccer.

MacQueen kept working until one night she lost her balance and fell, waking up with a throbbing headache. After that, she went on long-term disability.

She can walk, still drives and loves gardening in the summer time. She hopes to maintain her current lifestyle, she says. “We’ll see what happens.”

With three grown children, MacQueen is looking forward to being a grandmother. “I hope I’ll be able to hold a grandchild,” she says.

With her attitude, the oven will be warm with a few dozen cookies.

Look for essays on sports and community news; From Where I Sit, a perspective on disability; Edmonton Oil King news and so much more on my blog, edmontonjournal.com

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Single+plans+therapy+United+States/5810342/story.html