“MS has taught me to redefine my strength,” she tells PEOPLE
It was late October in 2010 when blind Paralympic skier Danelle Umstead first noticed something was wrong. She’d just finished an intense day of training and skiing, but her right foot was tingling, and she was having trouble taking off her ski boot.
“I thought I’d gotten a little frostbite,” she says. “But I was crying because it really hurt.” Her husband and ski guide, Rob Umstead, chalked it up to fatigue. But the tingling sensation persisted — and the next day, when she woke up, her right side was completely paralyzed. “From my rib cage all the way down to my toes on my right side — I couldn’t move,” recalls Umstead. “I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t sit up. I screamed to Rob, and he picked me up and took me to the emergency room. I thought I’d had a stroke.”
Over the next few months doctors searched for answers, at first telling Umstead she had transverse myelitis, a rare neurological condition in which the spine is inflamed. They prescribed steroids and physical therapy, but after several more episodes of numbness, Umstead was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “It was a very hard journey,” recalls the now 54-year-old. “I had to learn how to walk again, how to run again — and I had to learn to ski again. And that’s when it really sunk in how MS had control over my body.”…