Health Tineke Cyr took part in the annual Carnation Campaign in Saint John on Friday

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SAINT JOHN - In October of 2002, Tineke Cyr was at home in Brantford, Ont. helping her children with their Halloween costumes when she slipped on the kitchen floor and her legs went numb. The numbness didn't go away.

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Peter Walsh/Telegraph-Journal

Tineke Cyr moved home to Saint John after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

Little more than two months later, she woke up with double vision.

"I went to doctors and neurologists and was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis," she said. "The progressive kind. Very few people have it.

"It was almost like my entire world changed."

Cyr, who's 37, has since moved back to Saint John with her three children and, on Friday afternoon, she, Fay Magennis and Anne-Marie Simpson, who both have MS, and Simpson's mother, Evelyn Robichaud, met on the second level of Brunswick Square to sell carnations.

They hoped to raise money to help enhance the quality of life for people with the disease, provide education and fund research to find a cure.

For example, Cyr says she gets about $500 a year from the society to help her buy the equipment she needs to stay mobile.

Seventy-five per cent of people living with MS are women; the carnation campaign is held just before Mother's Day each year.

As Cyr waits in her wheelchair for her parents, Peter and Rinske Salmon, to help her into the mall, she reflects on how she manages to keep a positive outlook.

"I can't dance like I used to, but I laugh, laugh, laugh. It's important to keep a sense of humour," said Cyr, who never seems to be without a smile.

At the special-care home where she lives on Westfield Road, Cyr uses a walker to get around and because most of her fellow residents are seniors, they have dubbed her "the young, smart and talented one," she said, breaking into another wide smile.

Before being stricken with the disease, Cyr worked as a bill collector, an experience she's written about in a piece she titled "Thanks to MS, there's one less bill collector in your life."

MS can affect vision, hearing, memory, speech, balance, mobility, partial or complete paralysis. There is no cure. Symptoms develop depending on which part of the brain and spinal cord the disease is affecting. Not all people with MS will experience all symptoms and often symptoms will improve during periods of remission.

"I feel like my entire body is on over-drive," she says. Food doesn't taste like it used to and her hair and nails seem to grow faster, she says. She speaks, slowly and directly but very softly.

"I miss being able to work and to walk," she says as she sits outside in the sun watching office workers flit about on their lunch hour.

Cyr's vision is normal now but she says her hands are partially paralyzed. Sometimes, her whole body feels numb.

"My writing's not so good now. I used to have a really fast typing speed, 140 words a minute," she said.

These days, Cyr, who loves to write, uses a computer to hone her craft.

"The computer is my friend," she said, adding that she teaches fellow residents to use it.

Cyr says she misses her friends and life in Ontario and would like nothing better than to be able to walk to the mall or to the store.

A Kennebecasis Valley High School graduate, she is, however, looking forward to her 20th high-school reunion next year.

The MS carnation campaign has raised more than $45 million across the country since 1976.