Coping with innovation
When Brooke Slick wheeled a piece of luggage from one end of the house to the other in 2014, she nearly cried: She’d just walked more comfortably and confidently than she had since her 2006 multiple sclerosis diagnosis. As opposed to the single trekking pole she’d been using to combat foot drop, the luggage was “like a rolling cane” or a railing constantly at your side. It allowed her to stand more upright and less clenched than she had in years.
With her idea and her husband Doug’s handiwork, they dismantled the top of the suitcase and screwed a black wire basket on the side to help her carry items that previously required help. Mr. Slick quickly noticed his wife’s new level of independence around their Bedford County home. His offers to help with mugs of tea, vacuuming or laundry were met with a “nope” and a smile.
Mrs. Slick, a 56-year-old New Enterprise, Pa., native, worked in New York City, South Florida and and near her hometown in a number of roles, such as legal executive assistant, vocational school educator and marketing director. She knew her contraption could help anyone with balance issues, including others battling MS, and had the experience to get the project in motion.
The invention earned a name — the Dash Cart — a patent in August 2017, and a top 10 spot in Lyfebulb and Bristol Myers Squibb’s
Addressing Unmet Needs in MS: An Innovation Challenge, which took place virtually March 11 and 12. The competition featured “individuals who created a product and a company based on the issues encountered during their personal experiences with a chronic illness (through their own diagnosis or that of a loved one),” according to the event’s
website.
Placing as a finalist in the national competition was based only on the Dash Cart, though Mrs. Slick has offered plenty more to the MS community.
After enduring a plethora of MS treatments from 200613, she agreed, at her doctor’s urging, to a period of short-term disability for rest and more therapies. But her mind didn’t get the memo. She “met” a woman from Texas via Facebook who traveled to Russia for a stem cell transplant — a rather aggressive MS treatment — and blogged her experience.
Reading that gave Mrs. Slick comfort with the process. Compared to the $250,000 price tag in the United States, it was just $40,000 in Russia, plus peripheral expenses such as travel. In spring 2013, she lived in a Moscow hospital for one month as she, too, received a stem cell transplant and chronicled the journey on her first blog, MSSlick.com.
It was a way to keep family and friends updated as well as being a fundraiser for the trip — it covered the costs almost entirely — that wound up helping others down the same path. Due to the effects of steroids and the long periods of daylight during “white nights,” she spent more nights at her Moscow hospital room’s desk than in bed. She’d field questions at 3 a.m. from worldwide blog followers interested in the same MS treatment. She shared the names with her treating physicians, so they’d know to look for the applications. She “lost count” of how many actually received the treatment, and she now oversees a Facebook page dedicated to guiding those who are interested in the same therapy.
Mr. Slick knows “it took a lot of guts” for his wife to fly to another country to seek treatment, but it paid off. The stem cell transplant halted the progression of her MS and even lessened some of the existing symptoms.
In 2019, she started a second blog, BrookeSlick.com, and popular web-based company The MS Gym asked her to host its revamped podcast. The website focuses on exercises for MS symptoms, and the monthly podcast covers a wide range of topics confronting those who have the disease, such as applying for social security, diet and, ironically, the stigma of using mobility devices.
Mrs. Slick wasn’t awarded the Innovation Challenge’s $25,000 prize, but she wouldn’t say she lost.
As intended by Lyfebulb and Bristol Myers Squibb, the summit was a chance for like-minded people to inspire one another and exchange ideas. As a result of those connections, the Dash Cart is one step closer to becoming a reality for others, although Mrs. Slick is still on the lookout for a potential manufacturer. As a seven-year daily user of her “suitcase with a basket on it,” she knows how life-changing her invention couldbe for others.
“MS makes you, unfortunately, reliant upon others, and no one wants to live that way,” she said. “The Dash Cart keeps me relevant, productive and independent. It gives you your life back.”