Nursing home resident aims to send positive message
The symptoms started with tingling, then numbness.
Then, when she was out on an assignment for her accounting job, Kathleen McGee's legs gave out and she fell to the ground.
So began McGee's odyssey with multiple sclerosis – a progressive disease that has forced her to live in a nursing home and move about with the help of a wheelchair.
But an odd thing happened throughout the diagnosis and 11-year progression of McGee's disease. Once a negative person, McGee made a conscious choice to look at her life through a more positive lens.
"I've not always been a positive person," said McGee during a visit at her Arden-area nursing home. "I spent a lot of my years as an able-bodied person thinking negatively. But I've learned to focus on what's good."
McGee began volunteering in a kindergarten a few years ago.
"I turned into a 5-year-old again," she said about the job's rewards. But when she moved to a nursing home, McGee had to give up the volunteer job because it was too difficult to travel to a school.
She hopes to start an online support group for people with MS who live in nursing homes.
"We get isolated because we tend to be younger than the general population of nursing communities," McGee said.
An organizer by nature, McGee serves as the president of her resident council at her nursing facility.
"Kathleen is very active. She does whatever it takes," said Elvira Griffen, activities director at McGee's nursing facility.
McGee has asked Book of Dreams readers to pay for a laptop computer that she could use in her room to communicate with others with MS.
"I'd tell them not to get discouraged," she said of the message she wants to send to others with MS. "Think about what (you) can do, not what (you) can't do."