18 Mar 2013 Activist doesn't let diagnosis stop her
by Jennifer Godwin
Pamela Jones Hyatt’s life took an unexpected turn in the spring of 2011, but it is how she rebounded that has brought a community together.
After weeks of left leg numbness, she visited a chiropractor thinking it was a pinched nerve. Her primary care physician urged her to get a MRI, suspecting it was something else entirely. Two months later, Hyatt had a startling diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.
The news rattled the Maumelle resident to the core. Hyatt, 34 at the time, never experienced any major health issues, and no one in her family had the disease, which attacks the central nervous system and causes symptoms ranging from numbness to even paralysis. And yet in July of that year, she found herself faced with an uncertain future.
Her initial reaction was shock, denial, even anger.
Hyatt, a counselor at the Department of Correction, said she and her husband, Wade, had difficulty coping for months after her diagnosis.
“The biggest setback in the beginning was depression,” she said. “I had a really hard time adjusting to the fact that I had MS. The emotions overwhelmed me.”
With time, though, and a support network of doctors, family members and friends, Hyatt pulled through and came to realize acceptance was the only way to get better.
“I teach inmates life skills and coping skills, and here I needed them myself,” she said.
A therapist whose father had MS helped Hyatt through the toughest emotional parts of the disease.
Her defining moment came when she realized, as she puts it, that she couldn’t continue the pity party.
Putting mind over matter, Hyatt became her own best advocate. She joined the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, participating in the 2012 Walk MS event. She had a small team that included one of her dogs, a golden retriever named Manson.
Hyatt feels a big responsibility to raise awareness about her disease, which doesn’t discriminate between genders or among ethnicities.
“I can’t change that I have MS, but I can bring attention to it and educate others,” she said. “Many of my family and friends back home thought it was a death sentence.”
Back home for Hyatt is the small farming town of McCrory, where her friend Amanda Creasey still lives. Creasey knew she needed to help her friend, so that first year after Hyatt’s diagnosis, she helped raise money through a boot camp program. The women in the camp, who call themselves the McCrory Boot camp Fitness Junkies, donated their monthly dues to the MS Society in 2012 and joined the walk.
The following year, Hyatt, Creasey and McCrory Boot Camp set their sights on something even bigger for an MS fundraiser: A daddy-daughter dance. The boot camp team pitched in again, helping to sell tickets, cook food and organize the event.
A boot camp member and McCrory teacher Carrie Bowling helped sell tickets at the school. A retired teacher bought a ticket anonymously, giving it to a girl in the class who couldn’t afford to go otherwise. Donations even came from community members who did not have school-age children. To Hyatt, this small rural farm
town “proves to have the biggest heart.”
Weeks before the dance, the ticket sales were such that the event outgrew its original building.
The rest of the community came together to help as well. A church helped with the tables and chairs, while the Boot Camp ladies provided and prepared the food. Sonic pitched in gift certificates and drinks, and a photographer, Dara Bramal, loaned her talents for the night.
Hyatt, a daddy’s girl, said the response was overwhelming.
“My daddy died when I was 15,” she said. “So there were a lot of should’ve, could’ve, would’ve questions for me. I wanted to be able to have this night that was just for daddies and daughters.”
Around 50 girls attended the event with their fathers. In the end, more than $1,000 was raised. Paige, who is Creasey’s daughter, will be collecting pennies at school from now until the April 13 walk in Little Rock.
For Hyatt, acceptance came after months of struggle. But she said the biggest weapons are prayer, faith for a cure, along with a strong support network and a positive outlook.
“If I give up, there is a chance that MS may win,” she said. “I pray a lot. I pray that my next MRI is going to be better than my last one.
“I’m blessed, though, for all of the people I’ve met through having MS.”
