Meet MS Warrior Maureen Kenney
My good friend Maureen Kenney is the type of person who helps others before she takes care of herself. I suppose it comes naturally since she is the proud mother of six. Yes, six kids. She is veri@ably crazy. Her words, not mine!
It was a particularly hot and humid summer morning on August 27, 2002 in Buffalo, NY. Maureen laid in bed willing herself to get up. She noticed the numbness she had been experiencing lately in her feet was up to her ankles. She chocked it up to fatigue. After all, her youngest child was only 4 months old and she was sleep deprived. Plus, she was constantly up to her elbows in diapers, laundry and dishes, and had spent much of the summer schlepping her other 5 kids to their sporting activities and play dates. Maureen heaved herself out of bed because she had too much to do and there was no time for rest. Besides, it was a Tuesday. Grocery day. And six kids need a lot of groceries.
Maureen pushed one grocery cart in front of her while she dragged a second one behind her. As she ambled down the aisles, the numbness started creeping up her legs. By the time she got to the check-out line, the numbness had intensi@ed up to her chest. She struggled with balance to load the grocery bags into the car and by the time she drove home, she knew it was imperative to go to the Emergency Room.
She underwent a battery of tests and surprise, surprise, they did not find anything wrong. The ER doctor sat at Maureen’s bedside and told her she is under a lot of stress with a full house and a newborn. He had the gall to tell her to go home and “look inside herself.” Maureen’s husband, Brian, was livid and said her problem is not in her head! And Maureen, being an avid marathon runner with the mental toughness to take on any challenge, was baffled the ER doctor would tell her the issue was psychological.
Maureen spoke to her Primary Care Physician that evening. He suspected Multiple Sclerosis and ordered an MRI for the very next morning. He was right. The MRIs showed a large lesion in her thoracic spine and multiple scars in her brain.
As she learned more about the disease, her fear grew. She was scared for her future and how MS would affect her daily life. How was she going to raise six kids? Would she lose her husband, her home? She was depressed and cried a lot those first few weeks after diagnosis.
Maureen received great advice from a very wise woman, her mother. She told Maureen, “There is no room for self-pity. You have too much to do.” And that’s what did it. Maureen turned her attitude around and decided to fight.
Maureen had many relapses during her early MS years, including a terrible bout of optic neuritis in her right eye that took 8 weeks to resolve. There were also days when fatigue or dizziness was so debilitating that she could not be productive. As a mother who was in charge of the household, always volunteering for bake sales and attending PTA meetings, she had to swallow her pride and turn to others for help.
Fortunately, she had her own little army of helpers. She taught her kids a set of life-skills that they never would have gotten from textbooks. They learned to cook, clean the house, do the laundry, feed the baby, support each other as a family, and a whole host of other things. Of course, sometimes one of the teenagers would gripe. But now as adults, they realized the lessons were invaluable.
Now that the kids are grown, Maureen travels across the country as an inspirational speaker to empower those living with MS. It’s an immensely rewarding job and she can continue to feed that innate desire to nurture and help others.
Maureen is an amazingly supportive Run A Myelin My Shoes teammate. Not only does she help sponsor mailing costs to ship shirts to our international friends, but she has physically been there to help the team as a whole even when injured. In Detroit, she ran leg 5 for one of the relay teams. She was not able to train that summer because of bursitis but instead of dropping out and disappointing everyone, she bit the bullet and did the best run-walk-waddle she could muster that day. A year later in Richmond, Maureen was still reeling from bursitis but she still flew out to Virginia to walk the 8K and cheer on her fellow runners to the finish line.
Maureen’s MS has quieted over the years and she is grateful for that. Further, after a year of rehab, her bursitis has quieted, too! Even with something that seems relatively minor, like bursitis, her late mother’s words still echo in her head. Maureen will not live in self-pity because she simply has too much to do!