RUNNING MAN
A year and a half ago blake hurdis, 36, couldn’t even crawl after a devastating ms attack. Nine months after a stem cell transplant, he’s training for a marathon.
Blake Hurdis keeps a running stroller in his shed to remind himself how far he has come.
A year ago, the Smiths Falls-area man would fill it with weights to support him while he painfully learned to run again after a bonemarrow transplant.
Prior to the life-changing treatment, a devastating multiple sclerosis attack had left him unable even to crawl. He was forced to pull himself around his house with his hands.
Today, Hurdis is training for a marathon, and that is just the beginning. So far, in addition to regular training, he has run 60 kilometres in one go and he is aiming for ultra-marathons and more long-distance running. Why?
To help other MS patients, and to raise awareness about the possibilities for them.
“I want to be an example in some way. There is nobody who stands out there and says, ‘This is what you can do.’ ”
Hurdis said his progress has stunned doctors, and he wants to see how far he can go.
“I want to see what is truly abnormal. How far can you push yourself ? Is it 60 kilometres? Is it 100 kilometres? Is it 200 kilometres? Who knows.”
A former soldier with the U.S. military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurdis, a dual citizen, underwent a bone-marrow transplant at The Ottawa Hospital in 2017 after becoming so incapacitated with multiple sclerosis that he feared for his life.
The treatment turned his life around — as it has for the other 56 patients who have undergone the procedure since it was pioneered in Ottawa nearly 20 years ago.
It is not considered a cure, cautions Dr. Mark Freedman, who helped pioneer the treatment in Ottawa, but the results can be remarkable. Freedman, a neurologist and professor at the University of Ottawa, directs MS research at The Ottawa Hospital.
None of the patients who have undergone the procedure since trials began in Ottawa in 1999, has had a new episode of multiple sclerosis.
“We have established a quality of life after the first year — in some cases six months — that is really improved.”
Freedman mentions one patient who went from debilitated to back working in construction after a bone-marrow transplant.
“They return to their lives. Many have gotten their drivers’ licences back, they have gone back to jobs and school. It normalizes their lives.”
Normal is not enough for Hurdis, though. He wants to push himself to physical extremes. In part, he is motivated by wanting to draw attention to the impact of a bonemarrow transplant on the disease.
The treatment is not for everyone. Only about five per cent of all patients with MS warrant a bone-marrow transplant, says Freedman. Those who undergo the treatment are among the youngest and also have the most aggressive and debilitating forms of the disease.
For other patients, Freedman says, there is ever improving medication that successfully treats them and keeps symptoms at bay.
The world of MS treatment has changed dramatically in the past two decades. The first treatment for MS wasn’t approved until 1995. Since then, there has been steady progress.
Hurdis recalls going to a MS clinic when he was first diagnosed and almost everyone was using a walker or in a wheelchair. “That is my future,” he thought. That is no longer the case. “Now, it is much less likely you will see patients in the progressive stage if we can get to them early,” Freedman says.
Hurdis, who is 36, was at the upper age range for the bone-marrow transplant when he underwent it in November 2017. He believes he was accepted because he was able to show he could recover.
The procedure itself can be hard on patients. Freedman says it can take a year of their lives to get fully back on their feet. For Hurdis, it took less. He will run the P.E.I. marathon on Oct. 14 — his 37th birthday — just 11 months after undergoing the bone marrow transplant. He attributes that, in part, to pushing himself — and that stroller — in the months after the transplant.
He doesn’t expect to break any speed records, but says he hopes to finish in a respectable time.
The bone marrow procedure, which uses a patient’s own stem cells to rebuild their immune system, is physically difficult for most patients.
It begins with rounds of chemotherapy designed to eradicate the person’s immune system.
“Initially, it sucked,” recalls Hurdis. “It doesn’t feel good when you take the drug, but it is really not going to feel good in a month. It took a couple of months for me to get over the chemo.”
He still takes pain medication to deal with back problems related to earlier MS attacks.
Still, 11 months after the procedure, Hurdis says: “This is the best I have felt in a long time. It feels like I don’t have MS.”
He wants to get the word out to other patients who might qualify, that there is remarkable treatment for aggressive MS.
“As much as I want to be an example of what is possible for people, I don’t want to be the only one.”
Hurdis began a Go Fund Me campaign in June to help get him to the P.E.I. marathon. So far, he has raised $595 of a $1,500 goal. Anything above $500 or $600, he said will be donated to the Ottawa MS clinic or the MS society. His page can be found at gofundme.com/5nhq6rs.
I want to be an example in some way. There is nobody who stands out there and says, ‘This is what you can do.’