Living With Multiple Sclerosis

"We have established a quality of life after the first year -- in some cases six months -- that is really improved."
"They [patients] return to their lives. Many have gotten their drivers' licences back, they have gone back to jobs and school. It normalizes their lives."
"Now, it is much less likely you will see patients in the progressive stage if we can get to them early."
Dr. Mark Freedman, neurologist, professor, University of Ottawa, director, MS research, The Ottawa Hospital

Harold Atkins, a haematologist, and Mark Freedman, a neurologist, worked on the breakthrough Canadian study published in The Lancet (Trevor Lush/Ottawa Hospital)

"Initially, it sucked. It doesn't feel good when you take the drug, but it is really not going to feel good in a month. It took a couple of months for me to get over the chemo[therapy]."
"This [11 months after the procedure] is the best I have felt in a long time. It feels like I don't have MS."
"As much as I want to be an example of what is possible for people, I don't want to be the only one [undergoing treatment for aggressive MS]."
Blake Hurdis, MS sufferer, Smiths Falls, Ontario

Only a small subset fit the study’s criteria: those with an early, active, highly inflammatory, relapsing-remitting form of the disease who do not respond to drug therapies. Study participants ranged in age from 21 to 50; all had been diagnosed within the previous 10 years; all were ranked between 3 and 6 on an MS disability scale ranging between 0 and 10 (6 is someone who needs a walking aid to walk 100 metres). Atkins estimated five percent of the MS population could potentially benefit. That is a not inconsiderable number given that 2.3 million people are estimated to be living with MS worldwide, more than 100,000 of them in Canada where the MS Society has declared the condition “Canada’s disease.” And it is undeniably a breakthrough, but there’s a danger in forgetting it’s not a potential cure for 95 per cent of people living with MS. Macleans Magazine, Ann Kingston

A dual Canadian-U.S. citizen who served with the U.S. military in Iraq an Afghanistan, Blake Hurdis had become so incapacitated with multiple sclerosis he felt his life was nearing its end. But then he underwent a bone-marrow transplant at The Ottawa Hospital in 2017 and the treatment has created an astonishing new life for the 36 year-old man who is now training to run a marathon. A year earlier, a devastating MS attack had so incapacitated him he had to resort to crawling, pulling himself along with his hands, at home.

He is one of 57 MS sufferers in total who have undergone this pioneering new therapy, introduced close to twenty years ago. Dr. Freedman, who helped in designing the treatment, cautions that it is not a cure despite its remarkable results. Of the patients who had undergone the procedure since 1999, none, however, has experienced a new episode of multiple sclerosis. One patient even returned to his work in the construction industry, after his bone-marrow transplant.

This is a treatment engineered for roughly five percent of people with MS, those who present as young with the most aggressive forms of the disease. Medication to treat other patients is constantly undergoing improvement to successfully treat their MS and dramatically reduce its symptoms. The past two decades has seen a vast improvement in the treatment of MS, since the first treatment was approved in 1995. Steady progress has made the lives of MS sufferers more livable.

The bone marrow procedure uses a patient's own stem cells, rebuilding their immune system, a process that is physically arduous for most who take part in the process. Rounds of chemotherapy designed to eradicate the individual's immune system starts the process. It can take a year of a patient's life to recover to the point where they are ambulatory with ease. For Blake Hurdis it took 11 months of effort to rehabilitate his body and plan to push himself to run a marathon.

His progress in fact, amazed doctors. "I want to be an example in some way", he explained. "There is nobody who stands out there and says, 'This is what you can do'. I want to see what is truly abnormal. How far can you push  yourself? Is it 60 kilometres? Is it 100 kilometres? Is it 200 kilometres? Who knows!"

A year and a half ago Blake Hurdis, 36, couldn’t even crawl after a devastating attack of multiple sclerosis landed him in intensive care. However, following a stem cell transplant last November, he has exceeded all doctors’ expectations and even plans to run the PEI marathon on his birthday, Oct. 14.  Julie Oliver / Postmedia