Carolina Hurricanes: Bryan Bickell and 2016
I can’t let 2017 come in without touching on Bryan Bickell of the Carolina Hurricanes.
2017 is almost upon us, but there were big stories that happened this year. Some of them were overlooked or ignored due to manpower reasons, but I cannot let one story slip through again before the end of the year. That story has to do with the Carolina Hurricanes, the little brother of the Carolina sports franchises but the only one with a Championship.
Back in mid-November the Hurricanes lost a player not to injury but to disease. Forward Bryan Bickell was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The three time Stanley Cup winner with the Blackhawks thereby had to put hockey on hold to deal with the disease.
Multiple sclerosis is the best known of a series of neurological disorders. It is a condition that attacks the myelin sheath around nerves. The myelin sheath protects nerve cells normally and also makes messages travel more efficiently around the network. Attacks of MS can lead to ‘double vision, blindness in one eye, muscle weakness, trouble with sensation, or trouble with coordination according to the Wikipedia article on the subject.’
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MS can be progressive or relapsing. That means that sometimes attacks will go away and the person will operate normally for a time before they come back eventually again. There is generally harming of the nerves even in the relapsing form of the disease.
It is not a sentence that I would wish on anyone. Losing control of one’s body by whatever means is not a pleasant thought. It is the reason that ALS remains the scariest thing I believe can happen to a person. MS is not so nasty, but it is no picnic either.
What is living with MS like? I can’t definitively answer that. My biggest exposure to the disease itself is the West Wing.
However I know all about living with a neurological disease that leads to ‘muscle weakness’ and ‘trouble with sensation.’ That is because I have Charcot-Marie-Tooth Syndrome, one of MS’s little brothers discovered by the same guy who identified multiple sclerosis.
Like MS, CMT is a degenerative nerve disease affecting the myelin sheath. Like MS, it has no cure. Unlike MS, it is a known genetic disorder.
In that sense I am jealous of Bickell. He got to be a professional hockey player and make big money before his diagnosis. I have to concentrate to walk, which puts people off around me. That’s because they perceive me to be depressed since my head concentrates on my feet. I am trying to fix my gait now because of what years of adjusting has done to it. Running is a chore, and painful at that. Which is a shame really, because I loved to run once.
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Bickell may not have those problems exactly. He wasn’t necessarily born with it so he’s not used to it being an element in his life. The biggest issue with relapsing MS would be the fear of knowing next attack will come and not knowing when so that preparation is futile. The rest of it is just adapting to what you can do.
Physical therapy and some vitamins can help slow down the degeneration and anything that engages the nervous pathways can help too. Bickell should have access to the best of those. His support network is already showing itself in form of teammates, former teammates, and former players.
If you would like to support people with MS or other conditions, you can donate to charitable groups that support research. You could also contribute to foundations fighting Muscular Dystrophy since MS and its relatives generally lead to some form of muscular dystrophy.