Biography

Memories of St Patrick’s Day 1967 by Eva Marsh

On St Patrick’s Day more than fifty years ago, I woke up immobile from the neck down. Doctors diagnosed multiple sclerosis and told me recovery was impossible, to get my affairs in order, I didn’t have long. But I fussed and maneuvered until I fell on the floor where I dragged myself in a crawl until my body started to listen to me.
Three months later I returned to work as a junior laboratory technician at the Ontario Veterinary College, Guelph Ontario. I spent my lunchtime in the library looking for research on healing, with researchers nearby to explain the significance of animal research in the scheme of human medicine.
Soon I found an article with full colour electron microscope photographs proving that damage to the myelin covering of nerves in the spinal cord heals with movement (Bunge et al, 1961). It can be argued that untrained, I could not possibly understand; however, in my ignorance I read research literally.
I learned about undifferentiated cells that float through the body, waiting for instructions to become cells required for repair and maintenance. The instructions arise from the effort to engage in customary activities! Today these cells are named stem, and research isn’t sure how they work!
In an embryology text I read how during development, the white matter or myelin, in the motor part of the spinal cord, develops as the brain assumes control over basic reflexes, such as the fetus kicking. In other words, movement promotes formation of myelin!
In the 21st Century we are excited by neuroplasticity and healing, but no one seems to know how this process can be initiated. As long as we believe that we cannot move, the body has no directions for healing. Where is evidence-based medicine when you need it?
After waiting twenty years for the system to apply this research, I wrote about my experience of recovery in, Black Patent Shoes Dancing With MS © 1989. I continue to follow research and am amazed at the number of times others try to take credit for being first to prove myelin can repair itself.
How much evidence do we need? Since I found Mary Bunge’s research in 1967, I didn’t worry about my future.  I I found explanations in Samson Wright’s Applied Physiology (1961) 10th Ed.  Revised by Cyril A. Keele and Eric Neil. Oxford Universiry Press. London New York Toronto.

I knew no matter what happened, I could always recover. I am now 75, and fully mobile, and I intend to dance til the day I die.