Like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, Dave Harasym has risen from his former life as a multiple sclerosis patient who had given up on leading a normal life, becoming a confident man now able to steadily stand on his own two feet again.

The Pickle Lake resident traveled to Costa Rica in February with friend and caretaker Jan Vaughan to undergo an MS treatment known as the liberation procedure.

Put simply, the liberation procedure works by using balloon dilation to bring collapsed veins back to their original state. Practitioners of the procedure believe it is collapsed veins that cause the symptoms of MS, and so, re-inflating the veins should take away some of the jerky movements, slurred speech, numbness and other indicators of the disease.

Prior to the procedure Harasym went through numerous tests to ensure he was in good enough health to go forward.  During the tests doctors found he had a few blockages in his azygos vein and in one jugular.

The actual procedure took about two hours, with Harasym conscious but medicated to forget the operation afterward.  Within just five minutes in the recovery room it was apparent that Harasym took well to the experimental treatment.

“He could hold a pen,” Vaughan recalled.  “I signed him in the hospital because he couldn’t hold a pen. He couldn’t feel it.”

Harasym had sensation in his fingertips, a new development.

“It was just, wow,” he said, still in awe months later.

Six hours after the operation Harasym rediscovered another lost skill – eating with utensils. He cut into a chicken breast using a fork and knife, and fed himself rice.

“He dropped no more than I would have lying in a hospital bed… he ate that whole chicken breast and cut it up with his two hands,” marveled Vaughan.

The improvements kept coming.

“Dave’s hands, for a year and a half, have been

blocks of ice to touch,” Vaughan explained. “He hasn’t been able to feel.  He hasn’t had sensation.  The first thing when he came up, he said feels my hands. This is a hospital room which is fairly nice and cozy. It’s not super-hot, and my hands were colder than his. His hands, as far as I know, have not gone cold yet.”

The colour in his cheeks came back very quickly, Vaughan said, and the frequency of his washroom use declined immediately.

For Harasym, who said he was not nervous before the operation, just anxious to get it completed, things are only getting better.

“In the first day I had got 100 per cent more than I planned on,” he said. “It was so quick.”

He uses a cane or a walker to keep his balance while walking, though he can easily and readily move his legs.

“It’s not that they don’t work. They work just fine. It’s just that my balance will flop over,” he explained.

However, on May 23 he walked unassisted for the first time since the procedure.

“I figured it was pretty neat that I’m up with a cane, but then… I was walking with nothing,” he said. “This morning I finally got up and I felt real good, and I put the cane aside. The walker wasn’t even in the room.  I just walked. You just have to make up your mind to do it.”

For a man who used to require an hour and a half nap after taking a shower, the energy and lack of fatigue have been life changing.  Now, when he takes a nap, it’s because he wants to, not because he has to.

“I’ve been up between five and six every morning since I came back,” he said, noting his quality of life has greatly improved.  “I think even the dog is enjoying me more now,” he laughed.

Independence, too, has returned to his life.

“He’s able to do more than just make his own coffee now,” Vaughan said.

“Before, he could throw a microwave dinner in but now he can actually sort of put together a mini-meal.”

“You notice something every day, something more,” Harasym said.

“You don’t notice a big thing. But you have to think, what was I doing a week ago?   That’s when it kicks in.”  Every day Harasym celebrates small victories, such as washing his bathroom floor.

“When I went down (to Costa Rica) I couldn’t even do dishes,” he said.

“I just had a big pile at the sink.”

“Who’d ever think you’d brag about doing housework,” he laughed.  “My laundry has been done. I keep up with that.”

Harasym said that before the procedure he was mentally at the end of his ability to cope.  Now, he glows, gleeful with every movement and discovery.

“I wasn’t really living before I went down,” he said. “I was existing.”

Though he runs a risk of his veins collapsing again, known as restenosis, the procedure was so easy for him that he would do it again without question.

“That’s minor,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.  It’s so quick.”

Harasym had to travel to Costa Rica, flying there via Toronto with a layover in Houston, because the liberation procedure is not done in Canada. Within the group of twenty patients Harasym belonged to, the majority took long, complicated routes to the treatment centre.

“Seven of our ten provinces were represented, just while we were there, in multiples,” Vaughan shared. “There were three people from Ontario, one from Manitoba, a couple from Alberta, and BC had three people.”

While the procedure remains controversial, Vaughan and Harasym are certain that it should be explored in Canada, now more than ever.

“If MS patients, and some of them will become burdens, if not to family then to society, they’re going to be hospitalized.

They’re in homes. If this is going to relieve some of the pressure on that, why wouldn’t we do it?” Vaughan asked.  “It’s not a major invasive procedure. It doesn’t take a long time, so why not, if somebody can get better quality of life out of it?”

She noted heart patients undergo balloon angioplasty on a regular basis, and sufferers of numerous illnesses are often offered experimental drugs and treatments.

“Manitoba has said they are going to run trials,” she said. “Saskatchewan is running trials. We know it’s going to be at least five years… It’s the time between now and then that the proof has been given and somebody’s happy enough to say yes, we’re going to do it here.  It’s all those people in between that have gone so far and passed away that they’re not going to

be able to take advantage of it.”

Harasym was never happy with the prognosis from his doctor.

“My doctor, all he told me was you’re going to get worse,” he remembered.  “He said we can increase your medication, your injections, and give you a wheelchair. That was his answer. I didn’t like that.”

For the two, additional faith in the procedure came in the form of every other patient in

Harasym’s group seeing improvement, be it large or small.

“Everybody managed to get something in the group,” Vaughan said.  And, like Harasym, others are seeing ongoing improvement.

“People who had the procedure last fall, last June, are still noticing improvements,” Vaughan shared. “They’re still coming forward.  It depends on where they were when they started.”

Without the backing of countless supporters, Harasym would have not made it to Costa Rica.

“He wouldn’t have gone, except for Pickle Lake and the region,” Vaughan said.

Donations poured in from people across Northwestern Ontario, with special fundraising events held in Pickle Lake and cheques, food and assistance coming from all over.

Harasym said he was extremely grateful to everyone who has helped along the way, especially Vaughan.

Townspeople worked while Harasym was in Costa Rica to replace the carpeting in his house with smooth floor, easy to navigate. They painted, and cleaned the house to spotless.

“It’s very, very touching,” Harasym said.  “I couldn’t believe how quickly that came together. I really couldn’t. I figured a couple of years we might be able to get the money together. Next thing I know, Jan’s saying here’s our date. We’re going.”

Harasym recently travelled to Dryden to attend a social for Al Neill, a Dryden resident who has MS. The two had been conversing since Harasym’s treatment, as Neill visited the same clinic in Costa Rica when he went for his treatment May 10.

“When we went out to Al’s social in Dryden, I saw in his wife’s face, what, internally, I was feeling,” Vaughan recalled. “It was amazing.  She was so thankful and just amazed.”

Vaughan found herself emotional, reliving the fundraising effort from months prior.

“The support of the churches up here, the support of somebody coming in with a meal, somebody asking what does Dave need?”

At the social, she told the organizers she knew how they felt, watching the community pour out support.

“They’re putting their faith in there. This guy is going to come back and have something,” she said.

“He’s going to come back and have a life,” Harasym affirmed.

Harasym has also inspired his sister in Dryden, who is dealing with the difficulties of

MS, to try the liberation procedure for herself.

“She didn’t want much to do with it until I came back,” Harasym said. “I saw her. I stood in front of her. I said look, it works.”

“I’m just so happy that my sister is going,” he beamed.

Now that they are home and experiencing the transformation every day, Harasym and Vaughan are eager to encourage anyone with MS to consider the liberation procedure.

“The earlier the better,” Vaughan said. “If you go down and you’re able to walk, and sort of walk in and walk out, there’s less to come back. People who have been in a wheelchair for a long time, they have to get those muscles retrained, and the pathways, because the neurons in the brain have to start firing and the lesions in the brain have to disappear as everything goes.”

“It’s definitely a positive experience,” Harasym said. “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have waited this long.”

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