TORONTO - When Theresa Piercey was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2002, doctors had a simple message for her — enjoy every good day because there may not be too of them.

Now, after getting the controversial CCSVI treatment, dubbed “liberation therapy” by its ardent supporters, Piercey said her condition has vastly improved.

“I’ve got my balance back, the dizziness is gone” Piercey said, at a rally outside Queen’s Park Thursday. “My fatigue is gone, I no longer have to take afternoon naps. I have better bladder control, my headaches are gone.”

Piercey, her husband John and the other 150 or so MS patients and their supporters, attended the rally to push Canadian governments to start funding CCSVI treatment.

“I want the Canadian government to allow us to be treated in Canada,” Pierce, who spent close to $12,000 to get the treatment in Clearwater, Fla. “If I was a diabetic or if I had cancer, or if I had dialysis and my veins had failed, they would give me an angioplasty.”

Long considered a disease of the central nervous system, MS affects up to 75,000 Canadians, often attacking in the prime of life.

There is no known cause or cure and treatments have been few. 

But since Dr. Paolo Zamboni first started offering his CCSVI treatments -an angioplasty on neck veins Zamboni theorized are blocked in MS patients — people like Piercey have eagerly signed on.

“You have to realize that this is giving hope to people who are living through really tragic parts of their lives,” New Democratic Party health critic France Gelinas said. “If there is a chance to offer those people support, to offer them a cure, then the government has a moral obligation to follow through.”

Federal Liberal MP Dr. Kirsty Duncan said she’s been pressing Ottawa since May to authorize clinical trials for CCSVI, a necessary step before it can be approved in Canada.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/05/05/ms-patients-rally-for-liberation