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n 2004, Jennifer Pevec was a force to
be reckoned with. A working mom
of two, she was a highly-successful
marketing executive in an industrywhere 50-to 60-hour work weeks were the
norm. On top of that, she fi gured she would
start training for a marathon.
It was during her second marathon that
Pevec began to realize that the exhaustion
and numbness she was feeling couldn’t be
attributed to runner’s fatigue. “About two
kilometres from the fi nish line, I just lost
control of the right side of my body and
started stumbling every couple of steps and
feeling a lot of pain,” she says. “I managed to
cross the fi nish line, but I knew something
was really wrong.”
Never say never
In April of 2005, an MRI confi rmed the
diagnosis of relapsing-remitting MS. “I was
shocked and devastated,” Pevec recalls. “I
didn’t know much about MS, and what I did
know wasn’t good. I was expected to be in a
wheelchair w it hin fi ve years. The most fr us-
trating part was that I was pretty much told
I would never run again.”
Always one to face a problem head-on,
she in for med her neurolog ist t hat she would
do whatever was necessary to take control
of the disease and get back in the race. “It’s
a very personal decision how you treat your
MS,” she says. “Some people stick with the
fi rst medication they try. But it’s always
been my way to throw everything I can at
a problem.”
And with every passing year, there were
new things to throw at the disease. MS
treatment is a rapidly-evolving fi eld with
rapidly-improving outcomes. “With young
people who are diagnosed now, I spend a lot
of time talking about how their prognosis
is much better than it used to be,” notes Dr.
Virginia Devonshire. “I encourage them not
to have in their mind a vision of a walker or
a wheelchair because these things are quite
uncommon now.”Treatment paving the road to Boston
With regular treatment, Pevec was running
marathons by 2010, though now with car-
bon-fi bre leg braces. She even qualifi ed for the
Boston Marathon, the runners’ Holy Grail, in
the mobility-impaired category.
Her current treatment is comprised of
two to three rounds of infusions. Even with
this treatment, Pevec’s MS isn’t gone. Some
days she can’t go running and some days the
pain and fatigue are so bad she can’t get out
of bed, but her MS has stabilized and she has
her life back.
Today, Pevec is training for her sixth
Boston Marathon, to be held on April 15th of
this year. It will be her 16th marathon and the
14th since her diagnosis. Through her running
and other activities, Pevec and her husband
have raised $90,000 for the MS Society of
Canada. She hopes to make it an even $100,000
by the end of 2020. Jennifer Pevec is still a force
to be reckoned with.D.F. McCourtHow Can You Run a Ma rathon
w ith MS? Ask Jennifer Pevec
These articles were made possible with support from a Canadian pharmaceutical research company.Left: Jennifer running the Hamilton Marathon.
Right: Jennifer receiving an infusion treatment.