It is not the kind of diagnosis anyone wants to hear in their thirties.
But it is part of new reality for 30-year-old Kim Moran of Abbotsford.
Just last month, Moran was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a disorder of the central nervous system that has no cure.
In June, she woke up with a feeling of numbness in her left arm. Weeks later, she was getting muscle spasms, and by November, she had a definitive MS diagnosis.
“I was pretty shaken up by it, I just turned 30,” says Moran. “I decided I can be silent about this or I can use it to try to encourage and inspire other people.”
So when she was tagged by a friend in the #stopdropselfieforMS campaign, she decided to share her story.
The campaign was started by Kayla Chatkiewicz from Toronto, who was inspired by the ALS ice bucket challenge that went viral this summer.
The idea behind #stopdropselfieforMS is to get people to stop whatever they are doing and take a selfie.
“MS is such an unpredictable disease, you never know when an attack is going to hit,” says Moran. “So drop everything, whether you are brushing your teeth or shaving, take a selfie and put a face behind the disease.”
Participants are then supposed to nominate three other people and go to mssociety.ca to donate.
“When I was nominated, I thought it was time to put a face behind a disease not a lot of people know about,” says Moran.
So she shared her own story of being diagnosed on Instagram.
Moran wrote:
This is how I feel about MS. I never thought in a million years I’d ever write this post, but in light of the publicity MS is getting this week, I want to put a face to a disease and a cause. This week #stopdropselfieforMS has been circulating through social media and for many it’s simply a hashtag. For me, it’s a lot more than that. I was recently diagnosed with MS, a disease without a cure that causes my body to attack the nerves in the brain & spinal cord and it rocked my world! This week I nominate all of you, my friends, family and “followers” to stop, drop everything you’re doing right now, and take a #stopdropselfieforMS. When you post your selfie, also take a second to pray for a cure and maybe even donate!
Moran is looking at treatment options now, but there is no cure.
An estimated 100,000 Canadians are living with Multiple Sclerosis. Moran says Canada has one of the highest MS rates in the world, and finding a cure here at home would be pretty special.
“Most people diagnosed with MS are between the ages of 20 and 40. A lot of them are on social media,” she says. “Even though I may not be someone who takes a selfie every day, a lot of people are. So we thought, if we could use something that people are doing every day to raise awareness for something that’s not often in the forefront of peoples’ minds, why not?”
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