Gary Yokoyama, the Hamilton Spectator

Eva Marsh has battled multiple sclerosis for 27 years -- and won. She has long believed movement is key to combatting the disease. Her view has gained recognition from experts and garnered letters of thanks from MS sufferers.

She wore a wildcat print jacket to the dinner, which somehow seemed perfectly appropriate for Eva Marsh.

The 59-year-old Copetown woman has spent nearly four decades clawing and spitting in defence of her unconventional findings about multiple sclerosis. And last month, when she was named one of Hamilton's eight Women of the Year, Marsh was all but purring.

"It gives me credibility," she says of her recognition in the Women in Health, Sports and Fitness category. "The award is an affirmation. There will always be people who shake their heads, but maybe now more of them will be willing to listen."

What Marsh wants people to hear is her message that MS is not an automatic sentence to life in a wheelchair and that it is possible to halt and reverse the progress of the disease. It's still standard thinking that a person living with MS for 37 years should not be able to stand on her farmhouse veranda greeting guests, usher them into the parlour to chat or escort them out to their cars when they're ready to go. But Marsh does just that, springing up to make coffee or fetch her award from another room.

She was shocked to learn of her nomination and stunned to actually be selected for the honour.

"I was so shocked," says Marsh, who bought a new outfit in Paris -- Ontario -- for the awards gala. "My husband nudged me and said 'You'd better go up there.' There may have been thunderous applause ... I don't know, I didn't hear a word after that. I hadn't done any preparation, so I just said my thank yous from the heart."

The handsome plaque and gold signet ring are not the only tangible acknowledgement of her contributions. There are also scrapbooks of letters from people all over the world thanking Marsh for the difference she's made in their lives. She figures she received the award, she says, "because of the effect of my story on other people and how it has helped them."

Marsh first began experiencing odd symptoms as a child and was labelled high-strung, overly imaginative and a hypochondriac. At 16, when she temporarily lost her eyesight, doctors told her she read too much and was studying too hard. When she was finally diagnosed with MS at 22, she felt "it was a relief. I knew I wasn't going nuts."

Almost immediately, she started investigating the disease and learned how it damages a person's myelin, the white matter that insulates the nerves and allows impulses to be conducted from one part of the body to another. The very first scientific paper she found was a study on myelin regeneration. It was heavy stuff, but Marsh read it word by word and found some paragraphs in plain English that convinced her damaged myelin could be repaired.

What followed were many years of physiological and psychological challenges, from single parenthood to skeptical doctors who doubted she ever had MS -- a theory she disproved with magnetic resonance imaging. She leaped each hurdle with a fierce determination, abandoning pharmaceutical remedies and turning to more holistic approaches and positive attitude.

Marsh believed movement was the key to combatting MS, no matter how painful or difficult it was, and kept in constant motion, much as she does today. She found support for her ideas from several well-respected doctors and researchers. If there were setbacks, she took comfort in the fact that she had recovered from them before.

"What's helped with managing life with this diagnosis is meditation and concentration," says Marsh, a seasoned practitioner of yoga. "With so many experts predicting the absolute worst, the hardest part was maintaining a positive attitude. You need to believe there's a possibility of recovery, because if you're certain there isn't, then there never can be."

Today she is virtually symptom-free, and keeps busy reading research on MS, working the speaker circuit and writing her second book, a companion to her autobiographical Black Patent Shoes: Dancing With MS, now in its second printing.

"There is research that suggests MS runs a course and eventually arrests itself," she says. "I feel I'm in that state of arrest now. However, I feel that if there should be more symptoms, I will recover again. My body knows how."

mnolan@thespec.com or 905-526-4689.