Edmond woman proclaims new MS treatment a success

EDMOND Pamela Gooch could not step out of bed on most days. Taking a shower exhausted her. Multiple sclerosis would not allow her to lift her 2-year-old son, Gooch said.

On June 2, Gooch underwent an autologous stem cell transplant at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Today, her chronic fatigue has vanished.

Now I can do that and play with my kids and go to the park and have a picnic, said Gooch, a 41-year-old former Edmond pre-K teacher.

MS remains an incurable autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. It occurs when the immune system attacks a persons myelin, a lining that protects nerve fibers. Symptoms of MS depend on where lesions form on the brain, optic nerve or spinal cord.

More than 300,000 people in the United States with MS have symptoms ranging from fatigue, incontinence, dizziness, double vision, imbalance, numbness or paralysis, to speech problems and other sensory disorders.

Gooch lives with progressive relapsing MS, a rare form of the disease. The pharmaceuticals used to treat MS did not prevent the explosion of brain lesions she had in April. Her right leg began to drag and she could barely walk to her driveway, she said.

Her autologous stem cell transplant experimental procedure is in phase III of clinical trials. The eight-week process works by resetting the immune system by harvesting her own stem cells after five days of chemotherapy.

Physicians depleted Goochs immune system to prepare her body for the transplant of her own stem cells.

Three days after the transplant, I felt this surge of energy and I didnt even recognize it, Gooch said. I hadnt felt energy in two years.

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Edmond woman proclaims new MS treatment a success