MS support group raises over $2,000 from walk

Tammie Lawrence, an employee at Cook Medical, woke up one day and couldn’t speak clearly. It was the first time she had experienced the problem, and it continued for a few days.

In 2009, doctors first diagnosed her with a stroke. But a spinal tap ­­— a procedure that extracts fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord — found that she had multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that disrupts the communication within the brain and between the body and the brain.

That same year, Lawrence helped start a support group in Bloomington for people whose lives have been affected by MS.

On Saturday morning, the group sponsored an MS Walk in honor of March, which is both National MS Education and Awareness Month and Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month. Participants paid a minimum $10 fee and could walk one mile or three miles starting from the main Ivy Tech Community College campus. The event raised $2,906, and the money will go to the National MS Society.

About 8,000 people in Indiana alone are diagnosed with MS, according to the society.
“It’s just a day-to-day not knowing how you’re going to wake up, or not being able to see or wake up not being able to walk,” Lawrence said. “It’s all those unknown things that really affect the people mentally who have MS.”

The severity of MS varies from person to person. Right now, Lawrence takes a daily injection called Copaxone, which costs her and her husband more than $30,000
a year.

Mark Frederick, who attended the walk but does not go to the support group meetings because he lives in Bloomfield, Ind., works full-time at the Crane Division for the U.S. Navy.

Although Frederick can walk occasionally and drive, on Saturday he was in a wheelchair.

Frederick was diagnosed with MS three years ago.

“I started twisting my ankles a lot and falling, and would be standing up and just all a sudden you’d be falling,” he said. “You’d think lightning had struck you.”

The most common symptoms for MS include numbness, loss of balance, blurred vision and weakness in one or more limbs.

John Kehrberg, 57, said MS has caused him to speak more slowly, a less common symptom of the disease.

“I couldn’t even feed myself,” said Kehrberg, who was diagnosed in 1984 when he lived in Chicago.

Two years later, he quit his job as a civil engineer and moved to Bloomington, where he lives by himself.

“One thing is that I don’t look like I have MS,” he said. “But as I walk around, I get worse as I get tired. If I park at the handicapped spot, people look at me funny. I look fine.”

Linda Brinson, who walked on Saturday for her younger sister, who was diagnosed nearly 20 years ago, said people couldn’t tell that her sister had MS.

“People didn’t get it,” she said.

Brinson said she tries to get involved in any event that raises awareness of MS.

“It’s emotional but positive, too,” Brinson said. “It’s nice seeing people work, and I’d love for her to be here.”

Lawrence said she hopes the MS Walk will become an annual event in Bloomington.

“It really is an unknown disease that affects not only the person who has it but the families,” she said. “So it changes lives, not just mine, but it changes everyone’s that gets affected by it.”