#12 - Kristen O'Toole

Kristen O'Toole shares an emotional life story of a young, successful PR professional with a whole life full of opportunity ahead of her, until one day she is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Kristen shares that she went undiagnosed for over 20 years and the insurance company delayed her MRI and ultimately delayed her diagnosis and preventative treatment plan. Kristen shares early symptoms of MS, the importance of a quick diagnosis, medication, advocation for a cure and how exercise has helped her maintain her independence and mobility. Help support Kristen's birthday wish to raise money for the MS Foundation through her participation in Bike MS. Make a donation. 

Kristen is a retired communications consultant. She previously served as a senior vice president at a US corporation, and now is a District Activist Leader for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. She also serves on the NMSS Florida Government Relations Advisory Council, and for the first time, is serving as a Bike MS team captain to try to raise $5,000 for her 50th birthday to try to end MS! 

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Chapters

• 1:16 Successful PR Professional is Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
• 4:57 Various Symptoms of MS
• 7:16 How Fitness Has Helped to Maintain Independence
• 8:10 Early Symptoms of MS
• 10:08 District Activist Leader for MS Society
• 10:26 Kristen's Bike MS Event Fundraising Link
• 11:12 Brooks Rehab at Halifax Virtual or Trail Ride for Bike MS (Info Link)
• 14:47 MS Relapse and Flair-ups
• 16:13 Tysabri - Disease Modifying Injection Therapy
• 17:20 What Kristen Wants Us to Know About MS
• 20:49 MS and Heat Sensitivity
• 21:32 Importance of MRI Early and How Insurance Can Delay Process Resulting in Irreversible Damage
• 25:40 Does MS Discriminate?
• 27:56 Benefits of Exercise for MS
• 30:56 Handicap Accessibility
• 37:11 Kristen's Advice

Transcript

0:11

This is Angela Grayson from the Living Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It's All Possible! It’s time to wake up. Here we go. Hello, everybody. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast, and we're here today with Kristen O'Toole. Kristen has a story about her life and what she's gone through and how exercise has improved her life now and into the future. Hi, Kristen. How are you doing? Good. How are you today? Doing good. Kristen. Tell us about yourself. Let's go way back when, when you graduated college and what you were doing, and then we'll slowly make it into the other stuff. When I graduated college, I got a really good job and I worked at this global PR agency for 17 years. And then I started my own business and I were the Type A go get um type person. Then 2013 happened and I started getting a little pain in my back and that pain started getting worse and worse and worse. And so I went to a chiropractor and I went to a massage therapist and I did all these things and it got a little bit better, but not totally better. And so finally one time I was able to get an MRI and had to go through what they call step therapy, and I had to do physical therapy and all these things before I could finally get an MRI. So from December to February, it took me to get the MRI. I finally got an MRI and they said, okay, you're a candidate for surgery for sure. And so I saw a back surgeon in the morning it was a Wednesday and he operated on me by Wednesday afternoon. He said it was the worst disk herniation ever seen. And so when I went into the surgeon, I was basically in the fetal position I was in so much excruciating pain. I just wanted it to go away because it hurt so bad. Then I was in a rehab hospital, they transferred me from, you know, the regular hospital to rehab hospital because I still couldn't walk. The excruciating pain was gone after the surgery but I couldn't walk. I went to the rehab hospital and about a week in a few days, then I was getting worse, not better and they didn't understand why. I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't see or speak. Little did I know I had a raging infection inside of me that was causing my immune system to just to go crazy. I didn't know I had MS. Well, they thought I was having a stroke. They took me down, they coded me. They took me down to the ICU. I got a spinal tap in the middle of the night. An MRI in the middle of the night. I don't remember any of it. The next day the neurologist came into the ICU and said, We have good news and bad news for you. Good news is you didn't have a stroke. Bad news is you have MS and it looks like you had MS for I don't know, at least 20 years. So my whole adult life I had MS. I did not know that. Of course, I knew like a co-worker and a friend who had MS so I thought I was familiar with it, but I did not know how individualized this disease was. After two and a half months in the hospital, I got out and I started doing better. I was just so happy to be home because, you know, in the hospital, you know how it is. It's just horrible. It's just you're waking up constantly. And I couldn't I couldn't even move in the hospital. I couldn't swallow. It was it was really tough. When my parents moved me while I was in the hospital, they moved me into a new home. And my newlywed husband and I embarked on this MS journey. And so for the first couple of years, I really tried to walk. And then I realized that was not going to happen. So I have been using a wheelchair since 2014. So I heard of MS, but I never really knew anybody with MS until I met you and another friend of mine. You're both completely different cases, but before I met the two of you, I really never knew what MS was. Like, I thought knew what MS was. I had no clue, really. It is a disease. It's an autoimmune disease. My body attacks itself. The myelin sheath around the nerves, which is like that fatty substance around the nerves, that's what MS attacks and it eats away at the myelin sheath. So your nerves are just going haywire all over your body, depending on where your myelin is attacked and depending on how early you treat the disease really depends on how much better you get. There is no cure for MS, but the disease modifying therapy drugs actually halt the progression. It doesn't do anything with past damage, but it really helps you from getting any worse. I take comfort in knowing that. But geez, had I known a lot earlier, I would never have ended up in a wheelchair, you know, really. So there are a lot of other symptoms that come with MS, again, it just depends on you and where your lesions are, where the myelin is attacked. And then as a child, then people have a lot of trouble swallowing the speech. Some people have what they call drop foot. So they're they can walk, but maybe they're like the one foot does not work, you know, So they're kind of dragging it. They're just a lot of symptoms. Your central nervous system is attacked with MS. So it's your brain, your spinal column and your optic nerve. So some people have optic neuritis so they can't see. I had what was called nystagmus, so my eyes were kind of fluttering up and down. And I'll tell you, that was one of the worst symptoms I had. I mean, not being able to see it just not only screwed with my balance, but also constant headaches, you know, it was just I couldn't wait for that to go away. So finally that went away, luckily. And that's been a journey for sure. But the past ten years I have been using a wheelchair. I don't work and literally I worked all the time. I mean, that was my life. I moved from Pennsylvania to Florida to be closer to my family. Just my life is very different. But one thing that I know is I want to be independent and I've been able to do that, fortunately, and I've been able to do that thankfully because of fitness. I have worked very hard. Yes, I cannot walk, but man, I can do a lot of things, you know, and I can do a lot around my house. The hard thing is just knowing when you're tired, you can't go any further. You know, you just you need to stop slowing down and listening to your body is really, really important. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn. I mean, your body, I guess, just tells you to stop at some point. I think I pushed myself for a lot of years, you know, just go, go, go, go. And I wasn't listening to myself because I had no idea I had MS. So even before MS, you had the symptoms of being fatigued. I can look back and I can see that hindsight's 2020, right? I can look back and I can see various symptoms over the years. But they were so vague. They were so all over the place. Like I can look back now and see it at the time. No way. And I don't think any doctor would have seen it because it was like all over the place. I was tired sometimes. I never slept well, just random things that I think a lot of things that you can attribute to stress. Did your eyesight bother you at all back then? Did you have bad eyesight? Never. Never a dull read that. That's one of the biggest symptoms really going on with eyesight. A lot of people get optic neuritis and that first symptom, so they kind of go blind in one eye. It's temporary usually, and that's what a friend of mine had. So it's horrible because it’s scary, you can't see, but it's also a kind of warning sign, you know, and it's also something that diagnoses disease for a lot of people. But I never had that. Yeah. When when our bodies are doing things that they don't normally do, people think, oh, maybe I'm having an off day or okay, I'm just not feeling well today. But there's signs that usually something's going on and when things aren't normal, you know, we shouldn't really ignore it. Maybe listen a little bit closer, see if it's happening a little more often than normal so that we can go and get checked out. Hopefully doctors listen in. I've never been one to, like, run to the doctor for everything. And so things would happen and I would just be like, no big deal, you know? Especially when you're so young, right? Yeah, I was so active, you know, I was doing stuff all the time. I just didn't think about it. You are one of the most driven women I've ever met. Yes, you are. You are something, Kirsten, tell us about what you are doing now. You said you're not working, but in a way, you are working. So tell us what you do now. I currently serve as a district activist leader for the MS Society, so I do a lot of stuff with legislators, things that are important to the MS community. We advocate more in Washington and in Tallahassee this year I decided, I'm turning 50, September 21st. So I decided to try to raise $5,000 for the MS Society and do Bike MS. And I had never done a bike race before. With your encouragement, Angela, we are doing Bike MS this year. So on October 7, the race goes from Ponte Vedra to Daytona and then the next day it goes from Daytona back to Ponte Vedra. So there are lots of ways that you can participate in it. You can either do the full ride like that, you can ride from Marineland down to Daytona and just do kind of a 36 mile ride, which again, sounds kind of scary to me. Or you can do virtual rides and they have them all over the place, but Brooks Rehab, which is an adaptive sports group that I do a lot of things through. They are riding on the trails, so that might be what we end up doing. And it's 18 miles one way on this trail and 18 miles back. So we can do the full 36 mile, but we want to and take a little lunch afterwards and everything. So I think that'll be very nice. So anybody can join this ride. You don't have to have MS. Anyone can join the ride. It's one of the bigger rides in the country. From what I understand, One of the sponsors of the ride is the PGA Tour. It's a pretty big ride. And they end up in Daytona and it's a big deal. Yes. And money really needs to be raised to go towards masks because there is no cure as of right now. And they're trying to do research to find a cure. And hopefully what they do on October 7th and 8th will help provide funds to help with that research. Anybody can join that ride. And we will have in our show notes where you can go and apply to ride or if you would like to donate to Kristen's cause, that would be wonderful. That would be great. Thank you very much. Yeah. And let's talk about Brooke's rehab and Halifax Health also right together that does the adaptive sports. So Brooke's rehab is located in Halifax Health down in Daytona. They also have a very big facility in Jacksonville. Brooke's rehab has adaptive sports programs. For example, I bowl every other Friday night. They partner organization called Oceans of Hope. And they do kayaking and they do surfing, which I've done both. They have pickleball, they have table tennis, they have yoga. There's a lot of things that you can do through Brooke's rehab. And it's all great. Again, I would encourage anyone with an adaptive need to go to Brooke's rehab Adaptive sports there are something every day of the week for you. I participate in a lot of that. Yeah. Not only does participating in adaptive sports help you with your physical abilities and help make you stronger in different ways, but also mentally getting involved and trying to be more social, getting out of the house. It's quite, quite a mountain to climb over to even participate and get to know people. Very difficult to meet people when you don't drive and you know, you use a wheelchair, you know, it's very difficult. So like playing bowling, these different things, there's now a community, you know, you know, people who do these things. So that's very nice. An amazing program. Matter of fact, I have another podcast about that. That was released way back in the beginning of when I started recording. That's right. Yeah. Anybody can go back and listen to that podcast also with Chrissy Seiple(episode #2). A lot of good information there for anybody who wants to get involved. Okay. Going back to the disease of MS. I wanted to go a little bit deeper into MS and when there's a relapse, what that means and what could happen. Can we talk about that a little bit? The most common type of MS and the kind that I was diagnosed with is relapsing remitting MS. You kind of go through periods where you're pretty good and then you can have a bad flare up. And that just means a lot of times there's another infection in your body and your MS is going kind of nuts. So you have to be very careful when you have MS, about infections, about getting sick, about different things because they can cause your auto, you know, your immune system just to go kind of crazy. So when people have flare ups, I mean, it just just depends on how bad it is. Can have cog bog, which is, you know, just cognitive issues. You can have like all of the things that I mentioned before, you can have you can trouble walking. You can have a lot of things go wrong. Optic neuritis can flare up. It's very dangerous. So when you have a relapse, you kind of relapse and then you go back to where you were. But there's usually something that kind of lingers. I feel like you never get totally right again. There's always something. The other kind of MS, a lot of people go from relapsing remitting into secondary progressive MS. So that means that the MS just keeps getting worse. Progressive MS means it doesn't go back, it just keeps going and going and going. Knock on wood. Fortunately, I'm not there yet and my disease modifying therapy is an infusion that I take every 28 days, an infusion. It just means it goes straight into my vein for an hour. And it's called Tysabri and it works really well for me, knock on wood. And people go, Oh, works really well for you. Why are you still in a wheelchair then? Well, I'm in a wheelchair because of all of the past damage. You didn't see me ten years ago, you know, when I couldn't even move. Couldn't speak, couldn't do anything. So eat. Couldn't do your food. Oh, no. Now, Yeah. So in in the hospital, it was just. Smoothies and soft food. Yeah. Thank God for mom. Right. Oh, gosh my mom and my dad came up from Florida and stayed with me in Pennsylvania for two months while I was in the hospital. Thank goodness for them. What a journey that was. Oh, yeah. What do you wish everyone understood about MS? And also, what do you wish everyone understood about being in a wheelchair? And those are two big questions. So take your time. I think, with MS, I just wish that everyone would understand there is no cure. We need a cure. And it's so different in everyone. So just saying that you know, someone with MS doesn't mean you don't know someone with my MS. I did not understand that whenever I first was diagnosed. It's just so very different in everyone. And being in a wheelchair is very isolating. It's very difficult because, well, i just cannot do a lot of things that you just took for granted before, you know, and everyone acts like it's no big deal just to go places and they think it's very difficult, very difficult to load the chair up, to go places. You just can't do a lot of things. And I'll be honest with you. I mean, since I've gotten into the wheelchair and in the past ten years my life has changed so much. Friends, my social life has kind of dried up, just the very different life that I lead now, you know, than I did before. I'm very fortunate in that I can do my own thing and that I have the resources that I have to exercise. I thank my lucky stars every day that I can do the things that I can do, because I think I would be very miserable if I couldn't, you know? Yeah, that's because I'm an independent person. There are so many people out there with not only M.S. and other disabilities that are not in the same shoes that you're in and have a real difficult time with just everyday life because they don't have the resources that you do. I think because things were so bad for me in the hospital and things were so dark when I first got out of the hospital and I see where I am now, I think if I hadn't have gone through that really, really hard part, I wouldn't realize how good I have it now. You know, there was a hospital bed in my home. There was a lift in my house because I couldn't even stand. And how old were you? I was 40 years old. So it was a big change. And I had been married for two years at the time. And we moved. You know, I never saw my house again. It was a big change, but I just focused on, okay, I got to get I got to get better. I just have to get a little bit better. And again, I was thinking at the beginning, I was thinking my life was kind of going to go back to normal the way it was before. And I was thinking, well, jeez, I will be able to walk again, you know, this relapsing remitting thing. Well, I'm just in a relapse. I'll just go back to being able to walk again. I'll be able to go back to living my life. Well, I did get better, but I was not able to walk again. I can walk with a walker. I'm just very slow and very uncoordinated. And you get tired quick? Yeah, They'll get absolutely. For exercise. For me, it's not a load of transport to I would never use it really. And using the wheelchair. I know I'm not going to fall so it's a lot safer for me too. I'm not stable enough on my feet to do that. You know, you need to pay real close attention to your body and how you're feeling on a daily basis. You were saying that earlier, how it took a long time for you to listen to your body. And I know that getting tired is one thing. You have to rest when you do get tired. I also know that getting overheated affects you a lot. Anybody with MS, it could even cause problems. Do you know why that has such a big effect? You didn't know a lot of a lot of people with MS have heat sensitivity, I know I do. A lot of people do. So heat really bothers me and absolutely cannot get in a hot tub. I have never had the desire to be a hot tub person and before I knew I had MS, I did the heating pad on my back. That was probably absolutely the wrong thing to do. My nerves are probably on fire. You know, I did not know that. You know, I didn't know. Yeah, you're just trying to make yourself feel better. Yep. I had no clue. And I think I did a lot of things massage and chiropractic and different thing because I was more comfortable with that and it was easier for me to do that. Well, I needed an MRI. I mean, didn't know what was going on, you know, And unfortunately, the insurance not approved the MRI until I had PT. So I endured like six rounds of physical therapy and was getting worse by the second. You know, that is going backwards. Oh, yeah. I mean, if I had gotten MRI earlier, I may never have ended up in a wheelchair. I mean, seriously, that is now on the line. You know what I mean? I was able to walk a week before my surgery, I got the MRI on a Thursday night, and I walked into it. I mean, I was hobbled, but I was walking into it and then that was it. Never walked again. So I don't know why insurance is so backwards. It used to be that she would get X-rays first, maybe a sonogram, and then if they couldn't see anything, then they would send you for an MRI. Find out what's wrong with you first before they start saying, okay, we can deal with this with PT, or we can deal with this with surgery, or we or, Oh, wow, look at this. She's got M.S. We have to deal with it this way. I don't know when insurance companies changed everything around to where first you go through all these different modes and then you get your MRI. What a waste of time. What a waste of doctors, what a waste of physical therapy that's cost money to you. Why not go through the X-rays, the sonogram and then the MRI, if you if that's what you got to do. But find out what's wrong with the patient first before you start telling them what you think they should do. I agree. And many years ago I had back pain and I went to my doctor and he was also a chiropractor and he tried to adjust me and it didn't go away. It was getting worse. And I thought I had pulled a muscle because I exercised a lot, you know, did yoga. I thought maybe I did something. So I kind of ignored it until one day I was at work and I couldn't hardly breathe. And I had to go to the hospital, to the emergency room. But right away, maybe because I was in the hospital, they sent me for an MRI and I had a blood clot, my lung. And if I didn't get there when I did, and if they didn't give me the MRI, I could have died. Yeah, this is why they've changed things around to where the MRI is. The last thing they do is beyond me. That needs to get changed back to the way it was. They said they changed it because there was so much abuse in the system. I mean, you're right that, you know, I'm literally in a wheelchair and look what this is costing. Insurance companies. Right? Exactly. You know, you can't work anymore. My infusion, they charge my insurance company. I mean, I don't pay for it. But $17,000 a month. Yeah, a lot of money. Yeah. Now, isn't that worse than MRI? Oh, my gosh. Again, I am over$1,000,000 woman just by the drugs that they have put in me in the past ten years. I mean, think about that. That's a lot of money. But yeah, I've been fortunate in that my drug, like, I've stayed on the same thing for ten years, which is pretty unheard of. I've been able to stay on the same thing. So that's a very good thing. And it's still working very well for you. Yeah. Yeah. Because most people, they have to keep changing their medications because the old ones quit working as well as they used to. So then you become an experiment to see what the next drug is that will work for you. And I might not have exactly the right details, but this is about right. In the mid-90’s, I think there were three MS drugs? They are making progress. It's just there's no cure. So we want a cure. The National MS Society, It helps fund research, but it also helps people like me live better lives. It's a really good organization and I've been involved with them for a very long time now. So M.S. is more common in women than men. It's a predominantly women's disease, but the men who get it tend to get MS worse, so they tend to get MS harder. If you want to say that the men that I know that have it have progressive MS, you know, very severe cases. A lot of PowerShares, a lot of hospitalizations, just a lot of struggle. Now where you live is supposed to have some kind of an impact on people getting M.S. We talk about that a little bit. The vitamin D plays a factor in MS. The closer you are to the equator, the more sunshine you have, tends to be. You have less up there. So MS has mostly been known as kind of a northern European disease for a long time. But then people were coming back from overseas. Iraq, different parts of the world. Betterment So there's a big study going on now with the Department of Defense studying what is going on. Why are these people coming home with MS. There's something to deal with They think MS might have something to do with toxins? Some kind of environmental pollution, something to do with genetics, you know, so you probably have a genetic predisposition to it, who knows? But they really don't know what causes it. So it's kind of a perfect storm. Themes of a lot of things. Again, more research is needed. Oh yeah. And we always say with research there's a lot going on now, but it might be the next study that isn't funded, but there's a breakthrough. Yeah, that's why we need to keep doing the research to figure it out. Exactly. Okay. So it's really important to mention we talked about exercise a little earlier and how important it is for you and how with Halifax Health and Brooks Rehab, the adaptive sports program, there's so much offered there. But we also want to talk about exercise for somebody who has MS, as to how important it is to do to help manage the symptoms, the symptoms of fatigue, balance, you know, having issues with balance and walking to prevent falls and also to stay positive and focus that by being is one of the best things about exercise. It just keeps you kind of focused and keeps you positive and and it also kind of alleviate the stress that you have. And stress, as we all know, stress is a huge contributors to everything, but it's also huge contributor to the MS. You know, make every symptom worse. Everything that's going on with you is worse when you're stressed out. Exercise is great for that. It's also great for balance. Those of us with MS, balance is not our forte usually, but I do know that that helps me tremendously. And then strength. I mean, just being able to transfer from my wheelchair to my bed, from my wheelchair to the toilet, from the wheelchair to the couch, that's a huge thing. And if you're kind of not in shape, you can't do that for me. Everything I do is all about functionality. You know, I just want to be strong enough that I can do things that I need to do around the house. I mean, I don't want an aide all the time. I had to have an aide when I first came out of the hospital. And that that's very difficult, financially difficult. And it's also someone to manage, someone in your space that's hard. Okay. So we're going to keep that exercise going, Kristen. And it's important for me to have a trainer. I've always had that. I've been very fortunate in that because I don't know the answer what it is. I mean, it's hard for me to motivate myself, but I know if I have an appointment, I'll do it. It's also important for me just getting the weight and getting the steps and doing the different thing that that's a lot of work when you have them that you know and you're in a wheelchair. I can't do that, that when I'm by myself. So it's helpful to have someone else here to help me do different things that I can't do by myself. And I love being your trainer. Thank you. I love that you're my trainer. You're happy you have such a positive attitude that really helps. And Kristen never cancels on me. And that's okay. Kristen The other thing I wanted to say about being in a wheelchair, I just want to put this out there to everyone. A business owners, about how difficult it is to go places. Restaurants, use restrooms, public restrooms for people in wheelchairs. And I never really even noticed this before until I've been a few places with Kristen and also my mother, who is 96 years old, and I take her places in the wheelchair and how difficult it is to get in, to get out. Even medical officers who don't have the buttons they have might have them to get inside the building. But to go in the restroom or to go into the different rooms in a medical building or a hospital even. Let's talk about that a little bit. I just to make people a little more aware, especially business owners, people think that it's an expense, but it's necessary. I mean, as a business owner, I literally cannot use I won't go to certain restaurants because, for example, there's one restaurant that has the bathrooms are up a step that does me no good. There's another restaurant that I've gone to that I can't get in the bathroom. It's not wide enough. The doorway is not wide enough. I've been to a couple of restaurants, even nice restaurants. They say handicapped stalls and the stall doesn't close. If you put a wheelchair and the stall does not close, I don't know. I mean, the disability community says don't plan things without us. You know, we need to be part of these decisions and part of these because if you don't use a wheelchair, you would not have any clue a lot of the times. You'd say, Oh, that stall's big enough. You know, it meet these requirements and you put a handicap sign on it. Well, it does not close! So, if I go into a stall with my wheelchair, I need to be able to pull the door shut. There need to be room for me to turn around. You know, a lot of restaurants don't do that, also, once I transfer out of my wheelchair into a chair, there has to be a place for me to put my wheelchair. A lot of times I don't transfer. I'll just stay in my chair, like if I go to auditorium or something. Well, they often don't have spaces where you can just park your wheelchair. There are seats. But then again, like, okay, what am I doing with my wheelchair? My wheelchair is my leg. So I don't really love it being out of my sight. I really don't like people taking it, you know? You just don't know what's gonna happen to it. I can't move without it. So it's really important for me to have. Yeah, businesses should be required to do things a certain way to make it more accessible. They shouldn't have to figure it out. Yes, there's inspectors to make sure there's the electrical is done correctly, the plumbing is done correctly, the roof is put on correctly. This should be part of it. When you are on a business where people need to come in and have access to the place, no matter who you are, and you should have an urgent enough of it to you more just involved in legislature to make airplanes more accessible. The only mode of transportation that is not really accessible is airlines. So I get on a bus like, you know, I mean, anything with a wheelchair, you know, there are a lot of things that's because of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And for some reason, the FAA, which is the Federal Aviation Administration, native and such, it doesn't cover it. Riding on a plane is just horrible. Now I get on the jetway with my wheelchair, then they transfer me in the jetway into what they call an aisle chair, which is the super skinny chair that they will you down. You don't sit on it and it barely fits down the aisle. And they strap you in like a straight jacket. They strap your arms and your legs up. It is very undignified. And so you're the first one on the plane, thank goodness. And then you're the last one off the plane. When the agent put you in that aisle chair, there is like a gap between the jetway and the plane about a at least what usually. So they're lifting you over that. Again, I don't feel comfortable with that. They need to be trained. They're not. So this new FAA reauthorization bill. So the Senate is supposed to approve it. It's still a train. Make sure that everyone is trained to actually work with handicapped people. All new planes, not all planes. They won't be retrofitting, but all new planes will need to be handicapped accessible. There needs to be some kind of way that people can go to the bathroom. Again, I'm flying in October. You just know what kind of preparation that's going to take and it's just not my experience. I just know what it's going to take. And once they kind of dump you into the feet and use the restroom, there's no way. I mean, you can't get up and you just you just can't do it. I just better pray I don't have to go to the bathroom. So it sucks. I'm going from Orlando to New Orleans, so it's not a long flight. Like, well, thank goodness this change has been made. I'm sure it won't make an impact for a long time if they're only doing it on the new planes. Because how many new planes do we get to fly on? But baby steps, right? Will they be. Oh, baby steps. There goes that positive attitude. I love you. When I first started doing all the legislative steps, I'm a very impatient person, man. I like things like that happen happen, happen. And when I first started doing the legislative stuff, I'm like, okay, I have to remember this is a marathon, not a sprint. And it is, slow. I will tell you constantly are pushing for something and then a few years later, it's like, hurry up now all of a sudden that happened. It's rewarding when things happen because it takes a while, you know? But again, I'm not a lobbyist and I don't have money to throw around, but we activate for things that are important to us, so. MM hmm. Lower drug costs lower, which again, touches everyone Airline accessibility of the big thing. Step therapy, which talked about with the wheelchair. That's something we also have been activating for, and I feel like we have a lot of success whenever our organization bands with a lot of other organizations. So for example, the National MS Society and maybe the Cancer Association different, you know, different groups get together and they can push then for something like lower drug costs or something like that. You know, that happens, that touches everyone, you know, the therapy touches everyone, lower drug costs touches everyone, not just unique to the MS community. Band together. Yeah. Kristen, do you have a goal for our listeners to strive for so that they can live their best life? We just have a deal with the hand you've been dealt right? Nothing’s ideal. Everyone has issues and problems and you know, some are just more pronounced than others. You just have to keep going, right? One foot in front of the other. That's what I'm trying to do. All right. You heard it, folks. You heard it from Kristen O’Toole. Take some advice. Get one foot in front of the other. And also, don't forget to go to our show notes and either get involved in the Bike MS, or go ahead and donate to the cause. So hopefully we can see a cure for M.S. in our lifetime. Right? That would be great. that would be awesome. Yeah. We're looking for a world free of MS right? Yes. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for being on the show. I know that our conversation here will bring value to other listeners. Also, I'm hoping that people who don't have disabilities think about how difficult it is for those like Kristen to have access to and be able to get themselves to do what they need to do to live a good life. So what is your excuse? Get off the couch and start moving, right? Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. I agree. Well, thank you, Kristen, for coming on. I appreciate it. Thanks, Angela. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It’s All Possible! It’s time to wake up. Here we go.