Dear Everyone,
I am sure that you are all asking yourselves the reason for receiving this letter and my job is now to try to find a way to explain to you what is very dear to my heart.

To do so, I have to tell you my story, or better, tell you how my life took an unexpected turn last October 2006.
During a very stressful time in Keith’s life, while waiting to say goodbye to his dad who was losing his 4 year battle with colon cancer, I had a very unexpected day.
As some of you very well know, after a month of very mild and unpredictable symptoms, I found out, thanks to an MRI, that there was a chance that I had Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that kills the myelin, the fatty substance that covers the nerves in our brain.
A few days later, I found myself in the hospital, a victim of vertigo, vision and balance problems.
I was shocked and scared. I didn’t even have the time to accept the possibility of having this disease, that took my body and my mind away and all of this happened in a matter of just a few days.
I was taken away by the emotions and the fears of discovering I had a chronic illness and I spend the first month of my recovery learning as much as I could about Multiple Sclerosis.
As soon as I was able to stand up, to walk straight and to keep food down, I made learning and researching about this disease the new job of my life.
I made it part of my daily routine, I made it part of the new life, a life that I had to try to control, to accept and to love again.
A life that chose me to carry this weight on my shoulders, a life that found me and that chose me to be the next innocent victim of Multiple Sclerosis.
While I might be a victim of the many scary symptoms of this disease, I am not a weak victim and I am not ready to let it take my life, my mind and my future without making steps in the right direction…and this is my first step.

During my many discoveries and researches, I found a person who has become my hero and my inspiration.
His name is Peter Calabresi; he is a scientist that works at the world famous Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
He is the director of the MS Center, one of the leading MS Centers in the world.
I have learned so much about his studies, about his discoveries and about all the work that he is doing, day after day, into finding a cure for Multiple Sclerosis that I found it quite easy to choose him as the perfect person to give my hopes and my dreams to.
His dedication, his talent, his work ethic are well known in the MS world. The MS Society itself, decided to give him and his team a 5 million dollar grant which is part of an incredible 5 year study called Promise 2010.