From walking to eating hot wings, how a local mom finds multiple ways to fight multiple sclerosis.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Hundreds will put on their walking shoes in an effort to raise money to fight multiple sclerosis. Walk MS will be happening at the Friendship Fountain on Saturday, April 11. The site opens at 8:00 a.m. with a ceremony starting at 8:45, and walking beginning at 9:00. For one local mother, not only is she spreading awareness one step at a time, but she’s also doing it one wing at a time. I got the chance to talk with last year’s Walk MS honoree, Kourtney Strickland, about her life with MS, the struggle she’s received from others, and what made her decide to make a video similar to the popular YouTube series, “Hot Ones.”

“I was diagnosed in 2017. So I was 29 years old [...] I had always been very healthy, the picture of health, have never been in the hospital before, never had any chronic illness, nothing. I had actually just gotten off a bachelorette cruise for my friend. [...] Two days later, I was sitting in my office, and all of a sudden, the entire left side of my body went numb, from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes, out of nowhere,” recalled Strickland on what happened leading up to her MS diagnosis. “I went to the hospital, I had tons of tests, had an MRI, [and] a spinal tap. I actually consider myself pretty lucky because it was a quick diagnosis. It was pretty straightforward because there are like three or four things that you have to be present to be diagnosed with MS. There’s a specific protein in your spinal fluid, there has to be an appearance of lesions on your brain, a vitamin D deficiency, [...], and rule out everything else. So I had a vitamin D deficiency, I had to have a spinal tap and had the protein in my fluid, and they did an MRI where they found three active lesions on my brain, and they tested for everything else. So pretty open and closed case; it was multiple sclerosis, which I had never heard of before, and I was confused.”