Living with a life-long debilitating illness is never easy, but Carleton student Yassemin Cohanim, 52, said despite the challenges, she still loves life.
“I think everybody has challenges,” she said. “I’m very optimistic. The glass is usually half full.”
In 1980, Cohanim was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that affects a person’s nervous system, progressing to the point where they can no longer speak or control their muscles, according to the MS Society of Canada.
Additionally, patients often suffer from pain associated with muscular spasms.
The disease is degenerative, meaning it gets worse as time goes on, according to the website, and there is no known cure.
Cohanim is graduating from Carleton’s Management Development Program for Women (MDPW), a 10-month program for women who want to develop their management skills.
Her friends in the program participated in the Ottawa MS Walk on May 15 and raised money in Cohanim’s name.
Teams walked and rolled either two-and-a-half or five kilometres to raise money and awareness for MS research. Cohanim was one of the many participants and her classmates all walked for her.
The idea to start a team for Cohanim came from one of her classmates, Mia Eriksson Blundell, 38, who is also graduating from the MDPW program and a personal friend of Cohanim’s.
“I have a very good friend of mine [who does] the MS walk in Toronto every year,” Eriksson Blundell said.
She was inspired by how Cohanim was working hard to keep pace with everyone else in the MDPW program and got the idea of doing the walk, she added.
“I thought, ‘Hey, they must have an MS Walk in Ottawa,’ and that’s sort of how it started,” she said.
Cohanim said she was touched by the effort and dedication her friends gave for this cause.
“It was extremely inspiring to have all the girls do [the MS Walk] with me,” she said. “I was really touched that [Eriksson Blundell] brought it forward, and that she wanted to do this on my behalf.”
Wearing a feather boa around her neck to match those worn by her teammates, Cohanim took part in the walk in her wheelchair, which she has been using for about five years now, she said.
The Carleton team raised around $3,700, placing them among the top 10 fundraising teams of the walk.
Cohanim herself is involved in many aspects of the Ottawa chapter of the MS Society. She was involved with her local chapter of the social action committee since 2003 and in 2005, she became a member of the Ontario Social Action Committee.
She said that living with MS can be very tough.
“I'm very, very lucky in that I have very strong family support and I have a very close family and friend support that has really helped me get through,” she said.
A new theory suggested by an Italian doctor, Paolo Zamboni, makes a link between MS and a condition which occurs when veins going from the head and neck to the spinal cord are narrow or blocked, according to a website about Zamboni’s theory maintained by the MS Society.
As blood flow is slowed, the blood goes back into the nervous system and the body creates new veins to drain it, according to Zamboni’s theory.
But the walls of the new veins are too weak and the blood seeps into the adjoining tissue, depositing iron into the nervous system and causing an immune response from the body, leading to MS.
One possible treatment involves surgically putting a stent, or tube, into a major vein in the neck to increase blood flow, according to the MS Society’s website. No clinical trials have been conducted in Canada yet.
There is a debate as to whether the procedure should receive funding, but the MS Society has given out research grants to conduct more studies into Zamboni’s theory.
As a representative of the MS Society, Cohanim cannot publicly support the treatment, she said, but she is cautiously optimistic and plans to receive the treatment in Brooklyn, N.Y. in August.
“I certainly will keep an open mind,” she said. “I think it's very important to keep research dollars coming.”
Both Cohanim and Eriksson Blundell said the walk has strengthened the bond they feel with the other women in the MDPW program. They hope to make it an annual event and an excuse for the classmates from the MDPW program to see each other again.
