By DANI ROTHWELL
“I have MS but MS will never have me.”
These are the fighting words of Berwick’s Vanessa Weygang as she remains optimistic as a wife and the mother of three children.
Vanessa is fighting multiple sclerosis and aiming to raise $70,000 to get treatment in Russia.
Her fight with MS began in 2009 at age 38 when she needed replacement glasses and underwent a normal eye test.
When her right eye was covered, she couldn’t see any letters and asked where they had gone.
“This was the start of my new normal,” she said.
They discovered she had optic neuritis and told her she either had multiple sclerosis or a brain tumour, but not to panic.
Scans and a lumbar puncture revealed her diagnosis: relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.
Since then, life has been a daily struggle, but Vanessa is still fighting.
She has decided to take her life into her own hands and travel to Russia to receive Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT).
The treatment and related costs will be over $70,000, so she’s calling on the community to help her out.
It’s a treatment that removes the stem cells from Vanessa’s body and freezes them while she is given four days of chemotherapy.
This combination essentially resets her immune system, so it will stop attacking itself.
She first came across this treatment through a program on television in which she saw a woman have her MS halted.
While HSCT is available in Australia, Vanessa said it’s still in trial for auto immune diseases and she isn’t classified as disabled enough.
“I don’t want to get to that stage with the hope I can have it done in my country,” she said.
“HSCT will halt my disease; it will not reverse the damage already done.
“The numbness down my left side and lack of movement in my left hand, even the vision in my eye may not come back fully.
“To get the treatment done in Australia, I’d have to be really struggling or completely unable to walk and in a wheelchair.
“They’re looking for the cases that can be miracles and I don’t want to get bad enough to be that for them.”
Vanessa will spend 30 days in the hospital in Russia before coming back to Australia.
She will then live a fairly isolated life for three to six months, and up to one to two years in recovery until she’s given the all clear after the treatment.
Despite everything, Vanessa is focusing on living life to the fullest at the moment.
“I’m training for the Melbourne Marathon and doing yoga,” she said.
Vanessa recently held a fund-raiser movie night that raised $5000 and had more people wanting to attend than they could seat.
She’s hoping to continue to run creative fund-raisers that can involve as many people as possible.
To donate to support Vanessa, visit: http://www.gofundme.com/3u7qus467q or search Facebook for Ness Beats MS to join her community.
