Running the world…with MS
A woman’s quest to to change the face of a disease.
I want to encourage others, with or without MS, to keep moving forward. I want them to think, “If she can do it, then I can do it too.” -Cheryl Hile
You’re in Cape Town, South Africa, a world away from your home in southern California. You’ve just slogged through 26.2 miles of taking your body to its mental and psychological limits. You’re absolutely drained. But you know you have another marathon coming up next month. And then another. Then another. All told you’re going to run 7 marathons this year — on all 7 continents. You also have MS, which is slowly eating away at your nerves, meaning that one day you could end up in a wheelchair. But none of that that matters right now, because you’re trying to make history — for yourself and everyone else like you.
This is the most recent chapter in the life of Cheryl Hile, a contract and grant manager at UC San Diego. Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis — a disease that affects the central nervous system — a decade ago as a very active 32-year-old, she’s made it her mission to prove to other recently diagnosed individuals that they don’t have to let it beat them. They can do anything that they put their minds to.
It was 2006, and Cheryl Hile had been been running marathons for nearly six years. But recently she’d started losing her balance every once in awhile. She didn’t think much of it.
I started tripping and falling while I was running. My legs started getting heavier. It was so strange.
She just chalked it up to the fact that she was a marathoner — which puts a ridiculous amount of strain on the body. But then it got a little bit worse and then a little bit more worse, so she went to the doctor. Nothing could have prepared her for the diagnosis that day.
I was shocked. Being a person who’s so active to have such a disease where you could be in a wheelchair really scared me. I’m one of those people who, I just suck everything in and I don’t show any sadness. Coworkers, nobody really realized how much was going on inside of me. Even though they knew I was diagnosed. I really tried to separate that. I tried not to let it affect my job. I didn’t want my coworkers to know how badly this affected me.
But at home, it was a whole different story. She got really down. She often found herself trawling online chatrooms about the disease — and would read articles about all of the really awful things that could happen to people with MS. It was a dark time.
Pained to see his wife in the darkness for so long, her husband Brian — a fellow marathon runner — finally convinced her to get back out on the road. It was a major turning point.
I learned, just after a three mile run, that my head would clear and I would feel better about myself. That’s really how I got out of depression.
Around this time that Cheryl also started looking around the MS Society website. This was another game-changing decision.
It was through their programs where I actually learned how to deal with the disease. To get the real knowledge from the MS Society, that’s what really helped to push me forward. I realized that it wasn’t as awful as I made it out to be.
Reinvigorated, she pressed on with her running — not letting her disease get in the way of who she was or who she wanted to be.
Fast forward to the Fourth of July in 2015. Cheryl had just finished running a 5K — and a lightbulb appeared over her head.
Maybe it was the American flag or maybe it’s because I was in the beer garden, but inspiration struck and I thought: I want to be the first person with MS to run seven marathons on seven continents — and raise money for the MS Society in the process. I’ve always wanted to do something for them — for everything they’ve done for me. Something different. Something that nobody else has done.
So she started an online fundraiser on CrowdRise with a goal of $50,000. This would be enough to cover her and her husband’s travel expenses (Brian runs every race with Cheryl, as each one becomes a little more difficult for her). All the funds that she doesn’t use will go directly to the MS Society for research and to help other people like her find their way out of the darkness.
Cheryl just returned from Cape Town, where she finished the marathon in just under 5 hours. In October she heads to Buenos Aires. December brings Honolulu. January is Antarctica. Tokyo is in February. April is Vienna. And Christchurch in June is the last one. That’s a lot of travel that requires a lot of money.
But the end result — a new generation of MS patients with a new role model like Cheryl — cannot be quantified. So consider donating to her quest today. You can help prove that anything is possible.
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Decent Humans is a series of stories spotlighting the incredible community we witness on CrowdRise doing amazing things for good. By sharing their stories of aid, altruism, and passion we hope others will be inspired to live a charitable life.
