To My Fellow Vets with MS

• Are you a veteran living with MS?

• Yes, I am

• Did you develop MS while serving in the military?

• Yes, I did

• Did you serve in a combat zone?

• Yes, I did

• Do you have out-of-pocket medical expenses?

• Yes, more than I can afford

• Do you need help managing your MS?

• Yes, I do

• What physical barriers do you struggle with?

• Remembering where I parked the car, remembering what I was in the middle of doing, remembering what I was talking about in the middle of a sentence, Chores, going through clothes, keeping up with household fix jobs,

Global MS Society founder (1999-2000), Bosnia & Herzegovina, DOD Linguistic & HUMINT operations, Bosnia & Herzegovina and the Balkan region, Operation Joint Guard / Operation Joint Forge, Stabilization Force (SFOR), Annex 1A, Peace Agreement, NATO Alliance’s North Atlantic Council

Greetings Fellow Vets with MS,

If you’ve already read my bio you are somewhat familiar with my MS story, but I only mention a blurb at the end about how one of my goals is to work with veterans living with MS and teach you how to manage it. Here, I’d like to take a few minutes to describe my perception of our relationship as fellow veterans who also share the burden of MS as an attempt to explain why I feel drawn to work with you.

Let’s begin by discussing the first aspect of our relationship- we both live with the MS diagnosis. Because of this common label, we are eternally bound by those two seemingly insignificant, yet dreadfully profound letters. Ever since remission (~2011), my heart has been heavily burdened because of my deep empathy and desire to help solve everyone else’s MS problem too. So anytime I have ever crossed paths with a friend with MS, I have consistently gone out of my way to make time for them and help with whatever they need. After all, here I was, back to doing cartwheels and splits again and having the ability to play with my kids for the first time since they were born, while my friends with MS continue to be silenced. To put it mildly, friends with MS hold a special place in my heart.

Now, let’s turn our focus to our military connection. I’m not sure how long you served for, but even if it was only a brief time, the military experience is unique from any other, and undoubtedly has shaped and molded the very core of our beings with precision and authority.

We survived the soldierization process during basic combat training, which was a continual stream of extreme experiences: we endured immense pain together and were pushed beyond our physical and mental limits. We were at times famished by hunger and thirst, then forced to chug excess amounts of water and eat an entire meal in 1 minute flat. We shared tears, sweat and blood- literally, as we fought viciously against each other during pugil stick fighting and hand-to-hand combat. We went through the gas chamber on one side and come out the other with snot coming out of unimaginable places. We trained together to learn how to use numerous types of weapons, threw hand grenades and blew stuff up. We shined our boots and cleaned our rifles together, were sleep-deprived and mentally exhausted, and we did whatever they told us to do and didn’t ask why… because we signed a contract swearing our loyalty to serve wholeheartedly.

Another unique part of the military experience that deepens our bond is what happened when we got orders to report to a new duty station. Receiving new orders is like receiving a new family. From the moment we arrived at our new unit, we already knew that we had friends closer than brothers waiting for us. We understood that they were our new family.

We all really did know each other because the intensity of the shared experiences of military life brought us close immediately.

These unique experiences have created an unspoken bond between all service members that civilians are unable to relate to.

We have formed lifelong bonds and friendships that rival family ties, and they were already pre-formed and assigned to us the moment we arrive at our duty station.

Even after military service, not having spoken or heard from my army friends, some have looked us up after years and we still have that deep bond. We are bonded for life by our military service. Even now, living in a rural area, when I meet a fellow veteran, we are instantly bonded, and we share a unique level of trust and respect from the start.

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Anyways, to sum it up, now, things are finally starting to happen and my dream of figuring out how to help people with MS is actually becoming a reality.

And as both my friends with MS and fellow veterans with MS, we are even more deeply connected. As a veteran, you hold all of those unique aspects of trust and respect, because we served together, and just knowing that we may have experienced some common things that could have caused our MS to develop, I’m dying to get to know you.

I’ve been researching trying to figure out the cause of MS, and I think that this is where our focus should be.

I’m designing a research study for my PhD dissertation project that is going to test the effects of my treatment on people with MS. Aside from myself, I have only developed the therapy and tested it on animals with EAE, the animal version of MS. But, in 100 % of the cases, those who received my treatment experienced remission, and stayed in remission, just like me.

I’m currently enrolling people with MS who are interested in doing the experiment with me, and I’d love it if we could get enough veterans to do it too (**ENROLL IN STUDY)

This is really exciting for me! I’m so excited about finally figuring out how to get this website up and running, I just can’t stand it!

After diagnosis, I spent several years completely out of commission from continual relapses and disability and then when I was out of pharmaceutical options, I began researching and developed a treatment strategy that caused my MS to go into remission and stabilize. From that point forward (~2011), my life’s mission transformed into a mind-altering obsession trying to figure out how to figure out if my approach to managing this beast could also work for my friends with MS.

Per the advise of those closest to me, I kept silent about my situation to my colleagues the entire time I was in undergraduate and graduate studies designing and conducting experiments, only sharing my story with the professors who had the need to know.

I’ve only recently begun being open about my story, and that’s because I feel like I’ll explode if I hold it in any longer.

It reminds me of the bible story, “if they keep silence, the rocks will cry out!”

A miracle happened to me, and I didn’t tell anyone about it, I’ve been waiting for my advisors to advise when it would be the right moment.

Well now is the time!

For 22 years, my heart has gone out to my friends with MS reaching out. I’m going to go out on a limb and be blatantly honest and answer the very questions I’m asking of you, because I have the feeling that if you’re reading this page, many of your answers are going to be the same as mine. I’ve been searching for answers about what causes MS for 20 years and since I suspect we have so much in common, we should probably start spending some time getting to know each other and learning what we have in common and what we don’t.