Maggie & Montel: two peas in an MS pod

by Mary Polleys

It's an inservice day, and Maggie Wandell finds herself sitting on the couch watching daytime television. It is two years after Maggie was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease that attacks the central nervous system, and she is watching Montel, hosted by Montel Williams, who is also afflicted with the disease. Both of them are perfectly fine, leading their own lives, and overcoming the disease everyday, but Maggie and her family were not always sure about what would happen.
"I was immediately upset because my parents were," Wandell said about when she first was diagnosed. The disease and its effects were completely unknown to her, and she felt "confused, frustrated, and scared" about her condition and her future.
Maggie and Montel are a part of the approximately 400,000 Americans and 2.5 million people worldwide that have MS. Every week about 200 people are diagnosed.
When Maggie was diagnosed in her sophomore year, it was a shock for not only her and her parents, but also her 4 siblings, including 3 younger sisters. "They were told all this information but they didn't really understand what it all meant. Their main concern was whether or not I would be able to play and hang out with them still," Maggie said.
Today Maggie is hugely involved in school, being President of Best Buddies, Executive President of the student council, and a member of the National Honor Society. Clearly, MS has not stopped her from maintaining a busy schedule and her friends agree that almost nothing has changed since her diagnosis.
"It hasn’t changed our friendship at all. She’s still the same friend, she just has to go to the hospital on Fridays sometimes" said friend Conner Winn who has known Maggie since the pair was 5.
On a daily basis, Maggie has to give herself a 20mg injection of a medication called Copaxone. "It's not that bad. Sometimes it gets a little red, but really it just feels like a bee-sting." It's miles better than the previous injections she used to have to take, Avenox, which had significantly bigger needles that were injected in the leg and had more severe side effects, mostly fatigue. Maggie was one of the rare patients (about 1 in 1,000) with whom the medication didn't work, which prompted the switch.
In general, living with the disease was an obstacle that had to be overcome by Maggie and has prompted the entire Wandell family to become aware of the disease and turned them into research supporters.
Still, MS is a serious condition and when the symptoms arise, there are serious ramifications. When Maggie relapses, "the worst is the extreme fatigue, but also my eyes get blurry, and my legs feel numb. I have to go to the hospital when it happens," she said. Depending on the type of MS a person has, the symptoms are more or less permanent and can be more serious such as including partial or complete paralysis as well as loss of balance and muscle coordination making walking difficult, slurred speech, tremors, stiffness, and bladder problems.
Wandell has a remarkably positive outlook about living with MS. "There are worse things in the world. That's been my motto. There are starving children in Africa, so it's really not that bad," she said. She is leading 'Maggie's Crew' in the walk for MS at Plymouth High School for the second year on the morning of April 13.