Woman with MS hopes for Hand-Held Driving device that will enable her to drive again

Nothing keeps Cristina Duverge down.

Not her crutches; the pretty 30-year-old dresses them in gold ribbon and black velvet pads.

Not her wheelchair; the native New Yorker ignores it.

Not the 2005 diagnosis of multiple sclerosis that could have stolen her life.

“Life is not about getting dealt a good hand or a bad hand; it’s how you play the cards,” she says.

Duverge kept traveling as a child-literacy field researcher for the University of North Carolina and the University of Chicago though she had never attended college herself. She also continued working a third job as a liaison for the Derek Jeter Foundation at a New York public school.

In 2008, when her body gave out and she temporarily lost her sight to the disease, which attacks the central nervous system, she spent more time in the hospital than her New York City home.

“I could not move, I could not see. There were times when I knew I was headed for a long hospital stay so I made sure my hair was done and I at least looked good going in,” Duverge says.

Her mother, Ophelia Margarita Alonzo, quit her job as a home health attendant to care for Duverge.

Fast forward to December 2011. Duverge, now lives in Sunrise and is a student at Broward College studying criminal justice and sociology. Her sight has returned, her body is almost strong enough to ditch her crutches for a cane, and all she wants for Christmas is a hand-held automobile control device to move ahead on the road to independence.

“Words cannot express how ecstatic I would be,” she says. “I know I will never be Cristina all the way, but I’ll be so happy with Cristina at 90 percent.”

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