“In the end, he drops off everything on my lawn - couldn’t even face anyone, and left with my dog,” she said.

He drove her back to her mother’s house in her hometown of Syracuse, New York. Within hours of that conversation, Flynn’s husband was packing boxes of her stuff into a truck outside. “I asked him if he was even still attracted to me, and he said no.” “Nicely put, as my symptoms progressed, my marriage did not,’ Flynn said. But pretty soon, MS blew up her marriage too. He was in the Navy and had recently been stationed in Connecticut. In 2014, with no job tying her to Maryland, Flynn moved to be with her husband. “It’s really sad not to be in education anymore.” “Teaching was everything to me,” she said. “It was just untenable for me,” she said. Then they demoted her from department chair. She got marked down in her teacher evaluations - the same ones she’d aced the year before. Soon, the administration started criticizing her work. Instead of making her job easier with accommodations, they made her job harder. In fact, she said, it seemed as if the administration was actively trying to push her out. I wasn’t given equipment that would make things easier.” “My handwriting was slipping, and that’s very difficult as a teacher. After she got her diagnosis, though, things changed. “I literally went from being a teacher of the year, the year I was diagnosed, to slowly being pushed out of my position,” she said.įlynn was 33 and at the top of her game - head of her department, language arts, at the Maryland middle school where she worked, and highly rated by the administration. Then it started affecting her job as a high school teacher. Over the years, MS took more and more from Flynn - her ability to move freely, to play sports, to go out dancing with her friends. The diagnosis marked the beginning of a long, hard, painful fight - not only against her illness, but against depression, her doctors, her fears, even her own body. “I don’t know how they missed it with me,” Flynn said. It was 2011, six years since the symptoms had started, which meant not only six years of unexplained pain, but six years of lost treatment. Shortly after, Flynn was diagnosed with MS. “I was freaking out because I knew that something was wrong with me.” “She said, ‘You need to see a neurologist yesterday,’” Flynn said. Flynn pushed for answers, but again and again, her doctors brushed it off.Īnd then, finally, Flynn mentioned the symptoms to her gynecologist. She’d always been athletic - a diver, a runner, and an avid kickball player - not someone who was used to tripping over her own feet. “Which was really weird for me because I had excellent balance,” Flynn said. There was dizziness, Bell’s palsy, pain in her knees - and worst of all, she was starting to trip. I have hope.” What the illness tookįlynn was in her mid-20s when the symptoms started. “Wouldn’t you go for the chance? I don’t want to hear any of the sob stories or risk factors. “It’s like, what would you do if you’re in my shoes?” Flynn said. This was a Hail Mary pass they needed to take. The treatment, called HSCT, was risky, wildly expensive, and her doctors were against it. Which was why, in less than two weeks, Flynn would be on a flight to Mexico, in search of an experimental treatment that she hoped could turn back the clock on her MS. Or we can do what we believe is best for us, and give us that hope, and work forward together in finding a solution, in doing something.” “She can do nothing and in five years be completely bedridden. “We know that it’s progressing,” Bobby said. The “claw” was the result of more than 15 years of multiple sclerosis, or MS - an illness that had ravaged Flynn’s life and her body … and was only getting worse. It claws up constantly so she can’t use it, and she’s a righty.” “Her hand right now is why she can’t write,” he said. Last March, Jessie Flynn, 41, sat in the light-filled living room of her Syracuse, New York, home and held up her clenched right hand - or as her husband, Bobby Flynn, called it, her “claw.” This story is from The Pulse, a weekly health and science podcast.įind it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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