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A Battle With MS
| Article
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13977 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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2 / 1988 |
2,491 Words |
| Author
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Brian Clark
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Before the winter sun has crested the mountains and taken the frost off the ground, Jimmie Heuga rolls his shiny blue Cannondale bicycle out in front of his Colorado home. He leans against his Subaru station wagon for stability and pushes off, wobbling before he finds his balance. He then pedals surely down the road, his bounding golden retriever Daisy at his side.
For Heuga, forty-four, a skiing legend who won a bronze medal in the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympics, cycling is not just a joy; it was a key to regaining his physical and mental health after multiple sclerosis (MS) robbed him of his coordination and confidence in the early 1970s.
Today, though he sometimes walks with a cane--he has a special blue one made by an Italian ski-pole manufacturer--the sinewy Heuga surprises observers with his excellent physical condition. He will ski more than forty days this season, and he hopes to top the twelve hundred miles he put on his bicycle last year.
Heuga, who once stayed away from others with MS because he found the experience too depressing, has turned his struggle with the disease into a crusade. In the process, he has affected--at least a little--the direction and emphasis of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and convinced many members of the medical community that the disease can be treated with more effective means than advice to avoid stress.
Heuga heads the medical center in Avon, Colorado, that bears his name, and addresses dozens of groups each year--with wit--about his efforts to help MS patients maintain and regain control over heir lives. Heuga's center, which is dedicated to "the reanimation of the physically challenged," eventually will be expanded to work with people who have other chronic, spirit- and body-sapping diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.
"My experience has shown me that the 'beast' is not necessarily the disease itself, but the loss of self-esteem that it causes. The goal of this program we've created is to get people motivated again and get them active in order to regain physical skills they had thought were lost," Heuga said recently at a Vail seminar for MS patients.
Early symptoms
Heuga's career with the U.S. Ski Team continued to soar after the 1964 Winter Olympics. He remains the only American to have won the prestigious Arlberg-Kandahar race in Garmisch, Germany. It was in 1967, the year he won the overall World Cup bronze medal for the slalom, that he noticed symptoms that led to his MS diagnosis. He competed the next year in the 1968 Olympics and then retired from the U.S. team to join the professional racing circuit.
During the 1968 season, his timing and coordination were off ever so slightly. He had visual problems on the slopes and on overcast days, and he was emotionally drained. He'd run wind sprints with fellow ski-team members and not even try to win, he attributed the symptoms to burnout; after all, he had begun racing at resorts around Lake Tahoe when he was five years old. But the blurred vision--one of the first signs of MS--tingling from the waist down, and distorted depth perception kept bothering
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