“When I run I feel like an ordinary person”: the story of Merilù Run
“I run because the will to live does not allow for excuses”. is the motto of Maria Luisa Garatti, lawyer, marathon runner, social worker, Asics Ambassador… A “woman of multifaceted talent” who made the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis an opportunity to overcome the daily challenges of a sneaky and at times invisible disease. But also to show other patients that there is life – beautiful – even with the disease. “When I run I feel like an ordinary person, it’s a moment of escape”. Sport as a rebirth, to feel freedom on the skin than a neurodegenerative disease limits. Movement as a weapon to (re) take control, physically and emotionally, of one’s person.
Merilù, how did you find out you have multiple sclerosis?
The symptoms began between the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006. I had a chronic tiredness which today I can call fatigue, but at the time I associated it with work and endless days, I got out of bed with difficulty but at the same time I suffered from insomnia. Then I accused problems in one eye, I was seeing double, but I was already wearing glasses so I didn’t give too much weight to the disturbance. Finally came the problems of balance and coordination: I fell from my “heel 13” or I didn’t grasp the objects well which, inexorably, ended up on the ground. Friends said I was distracted and I carried on. But the alarm bell came in the morning when, getting dressed, I couldn’t button up my shirt, I didn’t have sensitivity in my fingers. I immediately went to my GP who ordered me to have an MRI.
Do you remember the moment of diagnosis?
Indelible. It was my mom’s birthday, I went to pick up the MRI report and I read “demyelinating lesions”. I was in the car with a colleague of mine who had accompanied me, I looked at him in tears and told him “I have multiple sclerosis”. Thus began a new routine made up of neurological examinations and visits. And finally lumbar puncture, which was traumatic both psychologically and physically because the needle took a nerve. Ironically, the outcome of the lumbar puncture came on my thirty-seventh birthday, May 17, 2006. I had multiple sclerosis, there was no more doubt.
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