Roughly 140 walkers have raised almost $36,000 (so far) through Sunday’s Stratford Perth MS Walk at Gallery Stratford.
For people like Shelby Elliott, fundraiser events like Sunday’s Stratford-Perth MS Walk help ensure they can find a treatment drug that allows them to effectively manage their symptoms and live their lives to the fullest.
Diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis four years ago, Elliott was initially prescribed an oral treatment for her disease called Tecfidera.
“I was lucky enough to be diagnosed in three months,” Elliott said Sunday. “That doesn’t happen for everyone, and fundraising money also goes towards those things as well. When I was diagnosed, we picked a treatment. I had lots of different options, did the treatment for two years and it took two years to find out it did nothing for me, which is very discouraging when you’ve just been diagnosed.
” … There are different lines of (treatment) medication, and once one of those doesn’t work, all of those (medications in that line) are taken off the table. So all of the sudden you’re left with maybe a handful of options. I was only eligible for one of them.”
That drug, Elliott explained, is called Lemtrada and is administered through intravenous infusion once a day over five days for the round, once a day over three days 12 months later for the second round, and once a day over three days at least a year after the last treatment if needed for any additional rounds.
“Lemtrada has only been in Canada for 10ish years,” Elliott said. “If that wasn’t here and it hadn’t come to Canada yet, I’d be kind of left untreated. Now I have two years of this treatment and I’ve had lesions, I’ve had shrinkage of lesions and I’m living day to day a lot more manageable. So it’s great.”
On Sunday, volunteer organizers of the event announced that the roughly 140 registered walkers had raised nearly $36,000 — and participants still have another month left to bring in donations. Elliott says that money, along with money and awareness raised through other MS Society of Canada fundraiser events throughout the year, not only help patients access the treatment, care and support they need, but it also has a direct impact on bringing lifesaving treatment medications to Canada for patients like herself who may not have any other options.
“If we didn’t do the fundraising, I don’t think this medication would have been here yet,” Elliott said. “It’s been in Europe for a (while) but it hadn’t made it here for a number of years. If we didn’t do the fundraising, I think it would have been a lot longer for it to come. And by then, it might have been too late for me.”
Sunday’s fundraiser event was also notable because it was one of just four across Canada that was entirely organized and run by local volunteers and sponsors.
“The MS Society has many across Canada that are staff managed, and then a number of others that are run solely by volunteers,” said Scott Davis, the volunteer fundraising lead for the MS Society’s central Canadian council. ” … (It’s organized) by all those folks who have pitched in today and given generously of their time, as well as the sponsors that provided sponsorship in the form of products, the venue — Gallery Stratford — and support. All of those sorts of things have combined together to create a completely volunteer-run event with some staff support in the background.”
While only a handful of MS Walks across Canada are being run by volunteers this year as a pilot program, Davis said the MS Society hopes to expand that model to as many fundraising events across the country as possible in hopes of reducing the burden on MS Society staff, especially since all Canadian MS Walks are now held on or around the same day — MS Day on May 30.
To see a full list of fundraising teams at Sunday’s MS Walk and to donate to any of them, visit msspwalk.donordrive.com.