MS Society carnation campaign returns

There’s always been an aura of hope surrounding the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s annual carnation campaign, but this year the optimism is especially high.

Late last year Italian researcher Paolo Zamboni discovered that in up to 90 per cent of MS patients, it appears veins draining blood from the brain are blocked or partially deformed, leading to excess iron in the brain.

Though Zamboni’s hypothesis is yet untested, it gives hopes to someone like Lia Graham, a single mother of two pre-teenaged children, who also happens to be the local chapter of the MS Society’s mother of the year for 2010.

Diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS, Graham faces daily challenges such as fatigue, numbness in her fingers and trouble seeing, but she’s holding out hope that Zamboni’s research holds water.

“It would be wonderful if we could wipe out the disease and let us live a healthy, long, enjoyable life,” Graham said, her two children watching a short distance away.

The news of Zamboni’s research spread like wildfire throughout the MS community, and Linda Adamson, the chairwoman of the M.S. Society in Thunder Bay, said she’s approaching it with cautious optimism and encouragement.

“It’s probably the biggest breakthrough that’s probably happened to the MS community in 50 years,” Adamson said, before presenting Graham with a bouquet of flowers honouring her selection as the mother of the year.

“It’s something that can easily be analyzed. Right now there’s been money put toward research both in Canada and the United States. The first stage of the research is looking at proving or disproving what Dr. Paolo Zamboni (claims).”

If he’s proven right, the cure could come in the form of a stent that would open up the vein, in much the same was as angioplasty works on patients suffering from heart disease.

“If we can prove or disprove that what he’s saying is correct, then it wouldn’t be that difficult to correct that problem,” she said.

For now, however, money is still needed at the local level to help MS sufferers in their day-to-day lives, whether covering the partial cost of a wheelchair or providing help around the home.

That’s where the carnation campaign comes in, Adamson said, adding money raised will help fund national-level studies, to a maximum of $200,000 over two years, that will be presided over by an international panel of experts and begun in the second half of 2010.

Carnations will be available at a number of outlets, include liquor stores on Arthur Street, County Fair Plaza and Thunder Mall, at Intercity Shopping Centre and the city’s two Canadian Tire outlets.

Volunteers will be selling them through the weekend until the 2,750 bundles of flowers have been sold. Their goal is to raise $16,000.