HERO'S = PERSEVERANCE: Golf a lifeline in battle with MS - Tony Johnstone is a Senior PGA Championship player:
"....Not long after, Johnstone sat in his doctor's office in London looking at a white blob on a scan of his brain. The doctor explained the blob; multiple sclerosis was attacking the nerves in Johnstone's brain.
Johnstone thought the diagnosis was a death sentence.
His doctor told him about a drug trial for MS patients being done at Cambridge. The researchers had only 120 spots, though, and were about to close enrollment.
'I got the 120th spot,' Johnstone said. 'It was definitely the best cut I ever made.'
The experimental treatment involved Campath-1H, a drug often used in organ transplant patients to shut down the immune system and keep the body from rejecting the new organ. Johnstone went into the hospital for a five-day procedure, then returned a few months later for another three-day treatment.
'They figured if they could switch it off completely,' Johnstone said, 'maybe it could come back without a faulty memory.'
Maybe it would quit attacking his nervous system.
Lo and behold, it did.
'It's just been not a career changer,' he said. 'A life changer.'
He chokes up whenever he talks about the past two years of his life.
'I'm just unbelievably grateful.'
Johnstone just couldn't imagine a life without golf. He enjoys the camaraderie, the joking and the teasing too much. Even though the treatment has allowed him to continue to play, it is still a struggle. Humidity drains him. Ditto for stress."