the quiet journey of multiple sclerosis: 'i didn't want to be defined by the disease'
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artee paul wants to be defined by what he loves most, his dog harper, and experiencing new places, activities—even the first time he hears a song by his favourite band—and sharing that experience with others.
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artee paul has a photo of his beautiful french bulldog, harper, as his cellphone wallpaper. oh, that flat, lovable face and perked ears! she’s six, but more like a romping two-year-old, he says with a smile. she’s a big part of his world and content to just sit in his lap, soaking up the adoration.
he talks about her helping him get through the breakup with his former long-term partner, the one he’d thought he’d marry and spend the rest of his life with. he also says harper’s the one who kept him grounded during the weirdness of the pandemic, a time marked by several hospital visits for tests on what he thought was a back injury. (he felt almost numb along one side of his torso.)
power of love to overcome challenges
when it comes right down to it, he says harper’s the reason he made it through some very difficult years. “i don’t know any other living being that will get so excited to have the exact same meal for the rest of their life. this same kibble, she thinks it’s like christmas morning every morning that i feed her and is equally excited to see me when i get home. like she hasn’t seen me in 10 years.” people who have dogs can likely relate.
without her, there would have been a huge void of isolation, going through the relationship split, the pandemic lockdowns and his jarring diagnosis. at 35, artee was told he has multiple sclerosis (ms), an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system, resulting in a range of physical and cognitive symptoms that get progressively worse.
this is a guy in his prime, a driven senior leader at a toronto finance firm who does crossfit training and recently competed in a hyrox fitness race in asia, shaving 10 minutes off his previous time. (the intensive indoor event has participants running 1km and then doing a functional workout like burpee broad jumps over 80 metres, repeated eight times.) now five years after his diagnosis, he has some vision troubles but is doing well and takes monthly self-injections of medication.
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multiple sclerosis can strike anyone
he didn’t know anything about ms and at first thought the neurologist was talking about what back to the future star michael j. fox has: parkinson’s disease. artee remembers sitting across from the neurologist in his office, trying to take it in. the doctor said it wasn’t that, briefly explaining ms. “then i said, ‘can i still go to cross-fit?’ and he said, ‘i need you to go to crossfit always and be physically active.’” he felt relieved about his training and the fact that he could also have moderate alcohol, which he enjoys when he’s socializing with friends.
“i said this to myself when i first got diagnosed on day one, and it popped up again in my head a couple of days ago,” he says of his commitment to harper. “i need to take care of myself because i hope there’s never a day that comes that i can no longer take you for walks.”
difficulty walking is one of the most common problems for people living with ms, although the condition affects everyone differently. as ms canada explains, walking can change with ms, sometimes becoming more difficult or less steady because of muscle weakness, stiffness, poor balance, fatigue and pain. these shifts might make walking slower or more tiring and can affect confidence or independence. with his cross-fit training and self-care, artee is doing all he can to be strong and mobile.
the quiet journey of ms
but managing ms has been a quiet journey in many ways. his family is in western canada, so they’re not around the corner if he needs support. he doesn’t talk about it openly at work, either, to avoid being labelled as “the guy with ms” because there’s weight that comes with that.
“i didn’t want to be defined by the disease. that’s really why even just now chatting about it five years later is still uncomfortable for me because i want to be defined by the things that i love, not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night,” he confides.
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there’s a sadness that comes with any health diagnosis surrounding how others will perceive you and make you feel different or limited. stigma is widespread.
“with ms, it’s a progressive disease, and i already have my own thoughts on that and fears around what that looks like. i don’t need other people with zero medical background or preconceived assumptions on the disease to actually opine. so i’ve kept that very close.”
the things he wants to be defined by are what he loves most: his dog harper, experiencing new places and activities—even the first time he hears a song by his favourite band—and sharing that experience with others.
finding clarity through adversity
ms has brought some clarity to what makes him most happy. while the physical aspects of living with ms are part of the uncertainty of what’s coming next, there’s all this emotion to process. “the thing that i was not prepared for was the emotional piece, right? because those can spring up whenever,” he says, adding he was out with friends recently and got home late, feeling guilty that harper had been on her own.
“my mind focused on her and all i could think about is, what am i going to do when you’re no longer here?” he says of returning home, sitting on the floor and talking to her as she settled into his lap.
“i don’t have children, i am single, i don’t have family here … that’ll be the darkest day of my life when she’s no longer here.”
while he takes care of himself as per his doctor’s orders, it’s not just for himself. “she’s the driver of that.”
there’s also the community of people living with ms and health-care providers in the space that have helped shape his outlook. and he wants anyone who is newly-diagnosed to reach out to others when they can, when they’re ready.
“i can honestly say that the cards that have been dealt to me in life, and we all have our own stories and we all have our own things. the cards that have been dealt to me in life have not been the easiest,” he says, “but i know that i will be ok. so for any person new to ms, it’s just knowing that people can be ok.” if they have a companion like harper, even better.
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his community helped him see that people with ms can thrive. he values the drug company, novartis, for developing the medication that’s working for him. and he appreciates his family doctor for insisting he go for further tests to eventually get to a diagnosis. there’s so much ahead when it comes to scientific discovery and help for ms.
“to the doctors, to the scientists, to the advocates, to anybody who’s ever once touched any of this, i really do owe them.”
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