27 year old women surprised doctors by overcoming the symptoms of MS after being told she would spend her life in a wheelchair
At the age of 18 Mez Gallifuoco’s dreams were destroyed when she was told her future would be in a wheelchair from MS and that she should never try and have kids. I woke up and had pins and needles in my legs and progressively over a week it had reached my waist and I was completely numb,’ Mez, a consultant and founder of Little-Soul.com, told Daily Mail Australia. Mez had just had a hard time through her HSC exams, struggling to hold her pen, when six months later the teen from Bondi, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, received a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis in 2005.
She knew nothing about the disease. All I could think of was a wheelchair. The only association I had was a wheelchair,’ she explained. Mez says she was not given a cure or miracle treatment and her recovery seemed to surprise doctors. She believes the relationship she formed with her MS ultimately helped her overcome it.
The 27-year-old, who has been MS free for two months, decided she was going to learn about her disease and signed up for a science degree at The University of New South Wales.
At one point Mez’s MS spread from two lesions to 26 lesions and her legs started to give out when she walked.
‘I got a lot of cognitive effects from it. I got really foggy cognitively which is hard when you’re doing a science degree. Mez described how she formed a relationship with what was happening inside her body, lived really healthily and dealt with the psychological side of the illness.
It never happens. My neurologist said “I don’t know how you are walking, you should not be walking with what you have”.
In May last year she was told it had spread throughout her whole entire spine but she went to New York for 10 months, came back and incredibly found she was in remission.
‘I didn’t want to hate something inside me so I just tried to use it as information, I will slow down if I get a flare up. Stress is a massive trigger for MS,’ she explained.
‘There is no miracle drug – not yet anyway… But my body is acting like I never had it. Nerve tissues have regenerated.’
Mez is now raising awareness for MS Research Australia, which supports scientists who believe they are really close to finding a cure.
Her results are also being used as a case study because doctors are so surprised by what has happened.
They want to monitor me but I feel good.
Great blog yyou have