MPH_FNLforWEB2

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Spotlight
By Jeongyoon Han
Photo courtesy of Casey Gibson
In September, MPH parent Jill
Walsh won two silver medals
at the Rio Paralympics. Yet
Walsh doesn’t flaunt her status. In fact,
she keeps her medals in a closet.
“She is not one to put things about
herself,” said daughter Julia, a senior.
“She’s one to focus on us.”
But when Walsh was diagnosed
with multiple sclerosis (MS) in fall 2010,
life changed for the entire Walsh family.
After months of ENT exams, MRI scans and
other tests, doctors finally diagnosed Walsh’s
vertigo, dizziness, and slight numbness in her
limbs as relapsing-remitting MS. The disease
can have mild to devastating impacts on the
central nervous system and currently has no
cure
Ẇalsh had played sports since high
school and, as an adult, played club soccer
and competed in triathlons. She was determined
to continue.
“Initially, I just thought I would go on
with my life,” Walsh, 53, said.
And for a while, she did, running with
friends and training for her first Ironman
triathlon. But her symptoms worsened when
a major relapse in 2011 left her with bilateral
foot drop, the inability to fully control both
feet.
Other side effects ensued, such as difficulty
with temperature changes, fatigue, hip
pain, left-sided weakness and proprioception,
or not being able to sense parts of her body in
relation to the rest of it.
For Julia, watching her mother tackle
these challenges was difficult.
“You don’t want to think of your parents
as anything but being super healthy,” said
Julia, the youngest of three. “At first it was
kind of hard to see because she would get
discouraged.”
But Walsh never stood idle in the midst
of problems.
“Whatever situation is handed to me, I
think I’m going to handle it with the same set
of rules … the same set of criteria I used to
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