She was lying in a hospital bed in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, unable to feel her arms or her legs, and she had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
“I lost all control of my body. It felt like my brain just shut down,” she says of the days and hours leading up to her hospitalization.
MS is a progressive autoimmune disease that damages the protective myelin sheath surrounding nerves in the brain and spinal cord, interrupting the signals sent from those sites to other parts of the body. It causes symptoms that can range from fatigue and numbness in the extremities, like Jasmin experienced, to tremors and breathing problems.
The disease affects about 1 million people in the U.S., and they are waiting for more breakthroughs in treatment options.
With physical therapy, medication and determination, Jasmin resumed most of her activities and returned to work as a project manager in the public sector. She has good days and bad days and an occasional relapse.
“My brain no longer works the same as it did before,” she says. “It takes longer for words to come to me or to digest information, but I am determined to get back to me and I have strategies to overcome those obstacles.”