Story and photos by Hannah Lee
WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina — He ignored the warning signs, and then he collapsed.
It was a warm spring afternoon 19 years ago, and Paul Donohoe was mowing his lawn in Winston-Salem. One moment he was cutting a row, the next he fell, as if someone had kicked him behind the knees.
Lying on the grass, Donohoe, then 25, fixated on his home 20 feet behind him. It felt so far away. A half hour passed before he could pull himself back on his feet. He then used his push mower as a walker as he staggered back to his doorstep.
“I wasn’t crawling on the ground,” Donohoe said. “It wasn’t that dramatic … It was like, ‘OK, I’ve got to go to the doctor.’ Kind of like, ‘OK, I’ve got to go eat something for dinner.’”
Doctors diagnosed Donohoe, now 44, with multiple sclerosis. According to the National Multiple Scherosis Society, people with MS may live an average of about seven years less than the general population. Those with it can struggle with depression, infections and fatigue.
But that’s not where Donohoe is. Instead, he’s maintained that same upbeat attitude — if it’s not an issue for me, why should it be for anyone else? — for the past 20 years.
In spite of the still-developing symptoms — walking difficulties, numbness, weakness, bladder dysfunction — Donohoe is determined to move ahead. He views his symptoms as minor obstacles.
Donohoe owns Quest Companies Inc., a marketing research company, and running it is a substantial part of his daily routine. Confronting those obstacles in the workplace remind him of a purpose that goes beyond the fears of living with MS.
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Multiple sclerosis, as defined by medical experts, is an unpredictable central nervous system disease that disrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and body. Basically, information doesn’t pass correctly in the brain and the body at large, causing uncontrollable and irregular physical and mental symptoms.
Donohoe is in the first of the four MS stages, relapsing-remitting MS, and has been for 20 years.
MS has no cure. There are treatments, but there is no guarantee that Donohoe won’t move to the second stage, secondary-progressive MS. Half of people in the first stage are supposed to transition to the second within 10 years, and 90 percent of patients do within 25 years. Donohoe is close to outliving those projections.
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He began feeling tingles up his spine, through his neck, and into his fingertips a year after he joined the Quest Companies. The feelings disoriented him, but it happened often enough that he grew accustomed to them.
Those numb sensations sporadically reappeared for a year until the lawn mower accident, where the heat of the day triggered his MS. Within months, a Wake Forest Baptist Health neurologist diagnosed him with MS. Donohoe’s case was both lucky and unusual because it usually takes a decade before an initial diagnosis of MS can be confirmed.
Dan Peterson, who lived with Donohoe after college, said Donohoe would mention that he sometimes lost feeling in his lower legs.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Peterson said. “I did not know anybody who had MS. I was scared for him. I know it has to be frustrating when you have to go to doctor after doctor presenting the same symptoms and not getting an accurate diagnosis.”
But despite those countless doctor visits, Donohoe was grateful to catch his MS early on. He could’ve kept discounting the problem. It could’ve been worse.
What was frustrating was the needles —syringes carrying medicine to target the inflammation in his central nervous system.
Donohoe hate needles. Even the word makes him cringe. He rotated injecting a half-inch-long needle into his thigh and stomach every other day, but on butt days he had to have someone else do it.
Butt days were bad days.
Donohoe and Peterson lived with a third roommate, Billy Smith, who was in med school at the time. When it came time for a shot to the rear, the job naturally fell to the doctor-to-be.
The two would quickly step into the bathroom, Donohoe would pull down his pants and kneel. Smith would do the honors.
“Great, man,” Donohoe would remark. “Can we go back to watching the game now?”
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In 2003, Donohoe’s father passed the company down to him.
“It gives him the challenge that he needs,” said Dr. Lou Valentes, Donohoe’s physician. “I don’t think (working) would be detrimental at all. Now if it were something that would adversely affect his health, where he felt overwhelmed and overstressed and burnt out by it … but I think he has that balance where it doesn’t.”
Most doctors expect MS symptoms to progress, but Donohoe’s condition has only gotten slightly worse, and he refuses to say that it’s the same as being progressive.
“I just hate that word, progressive,” he said. “That’s like a level where I’m in a chair type of thing.”
Donohoe doesn’t want his friends and family to think his condition is worse than it actually is. He is not decrepit and broken. His biggest struggle is walking, but he can still do it on his own with a cane, and he hasn’t relapsed in years.
His company just invested in new tablets that make his work easier, and he’s got a quiet office he designed himself. A Carolina basketball sits on top of a wooden dresser. Photos of the influential people in his life sit on a desk. And on the wall, certificates and awards show his involvement in the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
The small but important space is reflective of his greatest joys and accomplishments the last 20 years. They may seem simple on the surface, but the company office is one of his favorite places.
There’s even a bathroom in the back beside his desk that he had specially built to prevent him from sauntering down the hallway on his cane for constant (and unexpected) trips to the bathroom. That’s part of the bladder dysfunction, which occurs in about 80 percent of MS patients. Wherever Donohoe goes, he needs to know a bathroom is nearby.
He physically and mentally developed an environment of his own where MS is a fluid, mundane part of what goes on in his life.
“I think in the beginning a lot of people might have thought I was denying the fact,” Donohoe said. “A lot people accept the fact that something is wrong with them. I’m not doing that.
“I just ignored it. I’m fine. I’ve very fortunate.”
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MS has changed Donohoe’s life. His legs are weaker; his bank account is slightly lower for treatments; he has less time because of regular doctor’s appointments. But in keeping with his character, he’s still one of 19 people on the board of trustees for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Kristina Fransel, president of the Greater Carolinas chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said everyone has a different experience that changes them for either the better or worse. But it’s people like Donohoe who inspired her to work within the organization in the first place.
“MS is a very isolating disease and it’s a disease that a lot of people don’t understand,” Fransel said. “So having that common sense of purpose to come together and lean on one another is very important.”
Donohoe’s company and volunteer organizations are the glue that holds Donohoe together. He cares about the people in his life and that’s why he sometimes feels obligated to downplay his disease.
Two weeks ago he had an MRI and didn’t mention it to a single person. It’s important to him that he handle this on his own. He would rather put a smile on someone’s face than see pity in their eyes.
“I don’t want to tell anyone anything about what’s going on,” Donohoe said. “If I am stuck lying on the floor with my emergency alert button, if I’m trying to press it, that’s the last thing I’m going to call is a friend. That’s just me being stubborn. I don’t want to bother them.
“They have kids. They have their own lives. I can take care it.”
That’s the sentiment he carried with him from the first time he lost feeling in his legs and will be the sentiment he has until he falls into another relapse.
That stubborn, selfless, determined demeanor was all because of MS.
In a way, the disease that was supposed to maim Donohoe actually ended up motivating him. Instead of making him feel small or like a statistic-to-be, it made him comfortable with who he is.
“It is what it is,” Donohoe said. “It happens. It’s totally out of my control. I’m not trying to say my life is whole and all. I know that, but I’m not nervous about anything.
“I’m realistic about things. It might happen. It might not. And if it does, I’ll take care of it.”
