BY RANDY SHORE, VANCOUVER SUNJANUARY 1, 2010
VANCOUVER — Multiple sclerosis is a frustrating black box. Something is going on in that box that leads to lesions in the brain and damage to the myelin insulating layer on nerve cells. What that means to patients such as Gabrielle Veto is muscle pain, loss of strength, constant fatigue, occasional paralysis and the spectre of life in a wheelchair always lurking beyond the next attack.
“One of the biggest frustrations with MS is that so much is unknown,” said Veto, who was diagnosed at the age of 27 when she started to experience abdominal pain in 1996. She had been married to husband Alan Pearce for one year.
Veto’s case is like all cases of MS: it is completely unique and unpredictable.
“I ended up in Vancouver General Hospital emergency five times in one week,” Veto recalled of her first attack.
At first no one knew what was wrong. Doctors kept looking around the abdomen until her symptoms took a bizarre twist.
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