Judy Filipkowski put this up on FB. I thought we all could use some positive media reading so I am copying it here

By Lynn Rees Lambert

Posted 4 hours ago

Unbelievable? Too good to be true?

And yet those afflicted with multiple sclerosis are returning from receiving a controverisal procedure called Liberation — angioplasty to widen the veins in the neck of to restore normal blood flow.

They don't do it in Canada. They are studying it.

But look. MS patients are returning from clinics in various corners of the world with mobility, with the freedom the climb stairs, stand at the sink and wash dishes, get in and out of a shower. Even dust off some dance moves.

With one group of professionals lumping the procedure into the context of a snake oil selling job, and another group, more tactfully, calling for further study, those with MS and their families are left with the big question: To try it or not.

I know my mother would have jumped at the chance. But more than 30 years ago, when she was diagnosed, there wasn't much hope.

Actually, there was no hope. Period.

You got MS, your life was over. All you could expect was a slow deterioration. Loss of vision, loss of mobility, loss of independence. She used to say she never suffered an ache or a pain with it. Instead, she was confined to an ever-diminishing world where one day she could walk out to get the mail and the next not get out of bed.

She fell once, landing in the middle of the living room. As the kids were in school and Dad was at work, she lay there, unable to even crawl to a phone, until someone came home. She did the laundry by going down the basement steps on her bum. Dad — or myself, if it were the weekend — would carry the wet clothes out to the line while she slowly reversed the trip and up the stairs on her bottom. Until that stopped, as well.

That was long after the dancing stopped. She loved to dance. She loved to get in the car and drive. She loved her independence.

And when, at the end, cancer took over, she said it was going to lead to something she hadn't been able to do in years: get out of the damn wheelchair.

She had to die to do it.

Put some money into clinical trials. Give those suffering with MS — and their loved ones — a precious gift.

Quality time, if only for a short time.

And hope.

http://www.kingstonthisweek.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3173550

Conversations, now in its 31st year, has won national and provincial column-writing awards, and the author was named Ontario Community Newspaper Association 2007 Reporter of the Year. lynnlambert@kingstonthisweek.com .