Trish Rawls is an MS biking hero

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Trish Rawls is an MS biking hero New Bern Live

Trish Rawls is an MS Bike rider who really understands the cause.

She has the debilitating disease.

Rawls was diagnosed with the mildest form of MS in 2006 – relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis, or RRMS. In 2015, she had progressed to the next higher form, secondary MS.

According to the Mayo Clinic, MS is "a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord” that "attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that covers nerve fibers and causes communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body. Eventually, the disease can cause permanent damage or deterioration of the nerve fibers.”

Rawls walks with a cane (she says she has numerous ones of different colors so she can match her outfits) and Vision issues. It was problems with her eyes that led to her first diagnosis.

"It was painful,” she said. "The colors were different; I couldn’t see well.”

Her eye doctor sent her to specialists and an MRI confirmed her MS.

After she progressed to secondary MS she had to go on disability from her technical writing job at BSH. "I’ve never been back,” she said. And when you can’t work, "it changes you.”

She describes life as being like the Bill Murray film, "Groundhog Day,” with every day being like the one before. "The facial numbness, fatigue. It’s hard to get up in the morning. It’s a fatigue you can’t describe.”

She said the cause – like the cure – in unknown, but she suspect it is environmental. "I grew up in the country,” she said. "I was a tomboy, building forts, playing in the dirt. I had two other girlfriends that were neighbors, and they both now have… one has the worst kind and has to have a home nurse and the other is like me. I don’t think it’s coincidental that three people in the same town get MS.”

Rawls has battled ...

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