LOCALadk Magazine

14 Fall 2020 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk I have never thought of myself as being an inspiration to others. I certainly never set out intending to be one, and never imagined that my own sur vival would inspire hope in others. One thing I am certain of is that when I tell my stor y, people seem genuinely moved by it, and that it seems to help them. So I'll tell it here as well for you. My name is Marissa Collins, I am a retired EMT and ER nurse. In 2014, while working as a 911 EMT just outside of New York City, I sustained a severe and disabling multilevel spinal cord injur y while running a call. I caught nearly 300 lbs of a broken stretcher and the 6'5" basketball player who was strapped to it. In that fraction of second, my life as I knew it was over. I'd had dreams of becoming an Adirondack 46'er and planned my first high peak attempt that ver y fall, but that fraction of a second ended my dream and both my careers. The next two years are best described as hellish. I was mostly bedridden and had lost an estimated 30% of the mus- cle mass in my legs. My hips were forced into a 26% angle, making walking almost intolerable. It was a rare occasion when I could walk a few hundred feet or even just to my own kitchen. I had permanent ner ve damage in all four extremi- ties. Early on I knew two things: 1) I had no intention of living the rest of my life like this and would do anything necessar y not to, and 2) No matter how painful this got, I did not want to become dependent on narcotics. I never took them; in- stead I took dangerously high dosages of Ibuprofen. On what I called "nightmare days," I resorted to an occasional muscle relaxer. The majority of my rehabilitation came from alter- native therapies, including juicing high anti-inflammator y foods, yoga, meditation, Reiki, and most of all, doing the thing I loved most: hiking. "Hiking" with a severe spinal injur y is a relative term and was defined, for me, by any time I could walk across an un- paved grassy or dirt surface. The year I became disabled was the year my family finished building our weekend house in Fulton County. It would be- come known as "My Happy Place." Growing up, my family and I spent as much time as pos- sible in the Adirondacks. I fell in love with them at an early age. While here for one long weekend, I read an article about the Adirondack Fire Tower Challenge. I'd already hiked Kane Mountain, so something instantly sparked inside me. "I can do this! I have already started this! It may take me years— ok, maybe a decade —but I can do this!" For the first time since my injur y I found some purpose, something I could still obtain. Shortly after this, I dragged my father and youngest brother to Belfr y Mountain. It didn't matter that it was the smallest of the High Peaks; it counted, and now I had hiked two of them! Weeks after my second summit, my life took a drastic turn from hope and joy to terror and chaos. I began to experience neurological symptoms. My legs, which had always been pain- ful, now became paralyzed for several hours at time regular- ly. I noticed I was constantly dropping things. I began having uncontrollable spastic jerking in my legs, which caused them to flail. I have since discovered this is a type of seizure. I scheduled a neurology appointment at New York Univer- sity. At my first visit there, the doctor ran ever y neurologi- cal assessment he could think of. I failed all of them. He sat down in front of me and told me what no patient ever wants to hear. "Ms. Collins, you've failed your assessments and I'm going to be honest with you, there is something going on. I don't know what it is, but it appears quite serious." Through my years in emergency medicine I learned how to put a stone face on and focus on the task at hand. I'd remind myself "This is not your emergency" as a way to detach emo- tionally, but this time it was my emergency. Through tears I still tried to maintain my focus and ask the questions I most needed to know. "Am I going to sur vive this? What are the suspected possibilities? " His response was honest and to the point. "I'm going to run ever y test until I get the answer, and then I'm going to tr y to stop it." He then threw out words like "brain tumor," "Parkinson's," and "Huntington's disease." I immediately went home and purchased a life insurance policy and began planning my funeral. Weeks of testing re- vealed nothing. My symptoms worsened. I began going in- termittently blind and deaf. I displayed stroke-like symptoms and had difficulty walking and talking. My mental status was so changed, that I struggled just to make a cup of coffee. It was not until the first MRI report returned that we had some- thing more definitive. It revealed 11 brain lesions. (A fol- low-up MRI series with contrast revealed 14 T1 hypointense lesions—in layman's terms, "black holes"—in my brain.) I knew what that meant. When I went back for my doctor's vis- it, before he could speak, I said, "I have multiple sclerosis, order a spinal tap." He disagreed but ordered the procedure anyway. Two days before Christmas he told me, "It's multiple sclerosis and you're having a severe flare." I was given a high-dose steroid to stop the flare, but the flare was too severe. He referred me to a multiple sclerosis neurologist who, after evaluating me, immediately decided the best course of action was to eradicate my immune sys- tem. On Februar y 28, at the NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center just a week or two before the COVID -19 crisis hit New York City, I under went seven hours of infusion to kill my entire immune system. We decided even prior to COVID -19 that I would hide out in our weekend house for a few weeks during cold and flu season, but when the pandemic, hit there was no way I could safely return to a more densely populated area. A virus with a 1% mortality rate meant certain death for me if I was ex- posed. Struggles and Summits by Marissa Collins

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