{"id":10757,"date":"2015-05-20T23:44:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T03:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10757"},"modified":"2015-05-20T23:44:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T03:44:30","slug":"young-woman-shares-ms-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/young-woman-shares-ms-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Young woman shares MS journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mike Rodrigues<\/strong><\/p>\n

Receiving the diagnosis of a serious illness is never an easy thing to comprehend, especially at the age of 16.<\/p>\n

When Amanda Piron was that age she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). <\/p>\n

Since Amanda\u2019s diagnosis, the Aurora resident has volunteered her time to making sure that people with MS feel they aren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy helping people along with their journey in finding comfort and someone they can talk to,\u201d said Piron. \u201cOne of the scariest things that you hear people say is that we don\u2019t want to be alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with volunteering her time to speak to people with MS, Piron has gone into schools to share her journey with MS.<\/p>\n

May is MS Awareness Month and the MS Society has kicked off a across-Canada campaign with the hopes of raising awareness and funds for MS research.
\nAfter Piron was diagnosed with MS her life took a different route then what she believed it was going to be. <\/p>\n

As a teen, she played baseball for a competitive team and had a goal of pursuing the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was supposed to go away to school on a scholarship for baseball,\u201d said Piron, who is now 25. \u201cI had to figure out what I was going to do after high school now that I couldn\u2019t play baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Piron first started to feel the effects of MS, her academics and ability to play baseball suffered. This was her first indication that something was wrong. <\/p>\n

\u201cI started to notice that I was falling at practice, but I didn\u2019t consider it to be a problem,\u201d said Piron. \u201cWe would train five times a week and I noticed that my fitness level would never improve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to her battle with MS at the beginning her grades began to suffer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grades began to drop in class just because I couldn\u2019t focus, said Piron. \u201cFrom September to the start of the next semester in February there was a noticeable difference in my grades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple sclerosis is the outcome of immune system attacks on a person\u2019s myelin, a substance that surrounds the nerve fibers within the central nervous system. Once the nerve fiber is damaged nerve impulses that travel to and from the brain are interrupted and cause the symptoms of MS.<\/p>\n

When Amanda\u2019s symptoms first started to present themselves, doctors were having a tough time trying to figure out what the cause of the problem was.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the doctors thought I was way too young for MS,\u201d said Piron. \u201cThe doctors believed that I was just overworking myself with baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to the doctors\u2019 struggle to diagnose the problem and Amanda\u2019s mom asking them to keep information away from her, Amanda started to think the worst.
\n\u201cI spent three days at Southlake so I was starting to think that it was a lot worse. All I knew was that I wasn\u2019t going to die and that I didn\u2019t have cancer,\u201d said Piron.<\/p>\n

One symptom of MS that Piron suffers from is fatigue. This has caused a change in how her day to day life is run.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to be very selective about what I can do in a day because I only have so much energy,\u201d said Piron. \u201cIt has made me really focus on figuring out what I want because if I really don\u2019t want to do something I won\u2019t get around to it because I have to budget my time.\u201d
\nUsing the hashtag #TeamFlight on social media while help spread awareness to help battle MS in Canada. <\/p>\n

Other events include a MS Walk in more than 160 communities across the country and a MS Bike ride that is set to take place from June to October.
\nVisit endms.ca to see how you can help the battle against MS.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mike Rodrigues Receiving the diagnosis of a serious illness is never an easy thing to comprehend, especially at the age of 16. When Amanda Piron was that age she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Since Amanda\u2019s diagnosis, the Aurora resident has volunteered her time to making sure that people with MS feel they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Nv","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 11:03:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}