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By Zulema Phillips | Staff Writer
When a patient is diagnosed with Multiple sclerosis (MS), not being able to move is the biggest fear and can be mentally damaging.
For Jaime Flores, band director of La Feria High School, who was born in McAllen and raised in Mission, the loss of balance, dizziness and the unexpected diagnosis shocked his life at a young age.
“My fear was becoming disabled, becoming a burden to my family, to the point that they will have to push me around in a wheelchair or even put me in a nursing home,” Flores said.
In his mind, he automatically thought the worse.
“That’s what I was thinking. That’s it. I’m going to have to be in a nursing home or a day care at 30 years old,” he said.
But Flores didn’t accept the fact of seeing his life dimmed into a wheelchair or even worse. The MS diagnosis gave him the will to fight to the extreme for his quality of life.
He struggled hoping to be able to walk a mile, but that would be a big challenge for him.
On April 3, Flores completed the Memorial Hermann Ironman 70.3 in Galveston, a long-endurance event that covers 70.3 miles, consisting of a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) swim, a 56-mile (90 km) bike ride and a 13.1-mile (21.1km) run.
“(70.3) it wasn’t on my bucket list,” Flores said to El Extra during an interview. “I just wanted to do a 5K.”
The symptoms
Flores’ daily life changed when he started experiencing more than tiredness. He also struggled with loss of balance among other symptoms.
“I would get very tired. I would have trouble walking; when I would walk it seemed that I was drunk and loss of balance. If I turned too quickly, I would get dizzy, I would fall and it was that that caused me to go to the doctor,” he said.
Flores remembers that because of those symptoms, he knew it wasn’t normal, explaining that it wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m tired. It felt more than just tired.”
After his first visit to a general doctor, he was told that his ailment was due to a vitamin deficiency. Vitamins were prescribed, but Flores’ symptoms still continued.
The doctor associated his condition with vertigo and recommended some physical therapy.
“I went through the therapy and still wasn’t improving,” he said.
“Then, they said that I had nystagmus. It’s like when the eyes get very shaky, and most of the time when they pull over drunk drivers that’s what they look for in their eyes. Once again, none of the therapy was working. Then they told me that it was my weight so I started eating better but it still wasn’t helping anything,” he explained.
A second opinion
Despite the frustration, Flores continued to look for a solution to his deteriorated physical condition.
“I went to get a second opinion, and I went to a physician assistant, not even a doctor. A physician assistant from Sesame Night Clinic told me, ‘Look, it can be nystagmus, it can be vertigo or MS,’” he said.
Flores’ emotions were noticeable while he was saying that the physician assistant was the one that brought up MS, and Flores didn’t know what MS was.
As a patient, Flores requested to be referred to a MS specialist.
Dr. Mireles, a MS specialist in McAllen, explained to Flores that the only way to find out if it was MS was to put him in the hospital for a week and run tests, an MRI and a spinal tap.
At that time, Flores already had done a MRI in San Benito, and it showed some bright white spots on his brain. When he went to the neurologist in Harlingen, he was told that white spots in his brain come with old age.
“I was 30. I didn’t accept that,” he said.
That’s why he went to get a second opinion.
The diagnosis
Flores was hospitalized at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in McAllen during the week of Christmas 2013.
He had another MRI and spinal tap done, and finally, there was a diagnosis from Dr. Mireles.
“He’s the one that came in on December 27, 2013. I will never forget it,” he said.
“We haven’t gotten the results of the spinal tap, but with the results of the MRI there’s enough evidence to diagnose you with Multiple Sclerosis. It was a relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis,” Mireles said.
The uncertainty about the disease worried Flores.
“That night I couldn’t sleep. I just stayed up crying not knowing what it was. I stayed up researching it online,” he said, mentioning that it was the best and worse thing that he could have done.
The first thing that came up was that some people were bedridden, people that couldn’t walk, people in wheelchairs, on canes and even worse.
“I started fearing what it was going to happen,” he said.
The more he kept researching and the more he looked into it, the more he saw that there are people that live a good healthy life, even with MS.
Now, more and more people, even celebrities, are coming out that they have multiple sclerosis.
The day after the diagnosis, Dr. Mireles told Flores that he had two choices. Choice one, accept the diagnosis and just continue living the way he was, probably not be able to walk, and maybe even lose his career in a year or two.
Or choice two, try to fight it.
Changing his lifestyle, eating healthy, striving for better health, that would give him a better chance of living a better quality of life.
“At 30, of course I’m going to choose to fight it. I don’t think anyone is ready to accept it and just go with it. That’s why I decided to change my ways. MS will not win,” Flores said, adding that his heaviest weight was 380 pounds.
“I never thought that my weight would affect me in that way. My mom would always tell me, ‘Mijo lose weight, lose weight,’ but I was, ‘Whatever, I feel great! I’m doing fine!’ I guess MS forced me to be healthy,” he said.
About multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease affecting the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). According to Johns Hopkins University, MS occurs when the immune system attacks nerve fibers and myelin sheathing (a fatty substance which surrounds/insulates healthy nerve fibers) in the brain and spinal cord. This attack causes inflammation, which destroys nerve cell processes and myelin – altering electrical messages in the brain.
MS is unpredictable and affects each patient differently – some individuals may be mildly affected, while others may lose their ability to write, speak or walk, says in their website.
Nearly one million people are living with MS in the United States, according to a study funded by the National MS Society. This is more than twice the original estimate and means solutions for MS are now twice as important.
