MS: Many Stories – From the MStranslate Community

Whilst many people realise that exercise has benefits for people with multiple sclerosis (MS), they often don’t know where to begin.  In this new instalment of our MS: Many Stories series, we meet Andrew, who was diagnosed with MS in 1993. He, along with Sarah (his pilates instructor), talk about MS and how he has found pilates provides him with many benefits.

To provide some additional context to the video, Andrew provided us with the following statement:

“To give this some context – When I went to hospital with only two chambers in my heart working I was 12 hours from paddles stopping and restarting it. If that didn’t work it was a pacemaker. Thankfully drugs worked. My walking was robotic and slow and gradually disappeared into a shuffle. I spent 3 weeks in hospital. On day 2 Sarah came to see me and said “How do we get you out of here?” She was the only one to come to see me in the hospital rehab gym and saw me fall flat on my face over and over when I tried to climb a stair.

When I left hospital I was really not any better. Sarah saw me 5 days a week for 3 weeks. I now see her 3 times a week.  At the start, she walked me around the block, encouraging me to lift my feet and corrected my posture. We walked up and down the stairs in city buildings, Sometimes she held on to me and then gradually let me learn to balance by myself. I will never forget standing at the top of that huge staircase at Southern Cross Station and walking down it wondering if she could ever catch me if I fell.

Nerve pain is part of the game. Sometimes your shoulders feel crushed and your arms lose all feeling. The kindness and care she showed me while I dealt with that meant the world. I remember being stuck on the floor with my feet on an exercise ball and frozen with pain. Sarah put her arms under mine and lifted me up. It was all care and she wasn’t going to leave me just stuck there. It set the bar. I had to get better.

Pilates works because it takes a global issue and breaks it down into local parts. You are like a lump of clay. The water you can add are supplements like magnesium, medications like Baclofen and Dantrium or massage. They make you into a wet lump of clay. Only Pilates can take that wet lump and shape it into something better.

On top of that you need a magic ingredient called trust. That’s where Sarah takes it to somewhere special. Without her I would be in a private hell and the victim of medical orthodoxy which shoves panaceas and despair at you.

Thankyou Sarah for ever and ever.”