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My Friend Frank
Jimmy Huega of California was selected to the US Ski Team at the age of 15. At 20, he won a bronze medal in slalom skiing at the 1964 winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
Another American skier, Billy Kidd, won the silver medal in the same race. Huega and Kidd were the first American male skiers to ever medal in an Olympic alpine event. Huega was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis seven years later. Earlier this year, he passed away from complications of the disease. Huega was 66 years old. In his active life, he founded the Huega Center for Multiple Sclerosis (now called Can Do Multiple Sclerosis) and had been a pioneer in MS research and treatment.
When first diagnosed, doctors warned Huega that exercise could make his condition worse. But over time, Jimmy became skeptical of the warning and started riding a bike, began to swim, and eventually even returned to the slopes, albeit in a different way. He convinced many that exercise could be beneficial to those suffering with the disease. I thought about Huega recently because a good friend of mine suffers from multiple sclerosis. Frank was a scholarship athlete in college (baseball) and over the years we have enjoyed rounds of golf, fishing and camping trips, some late nights in New York City, and most of all-each other’s company. Though we’re on opposite sides of the country now, we still talk a few times a year. I remember when Frank first started using a cane after his diagnosis. Next, it was a walker, and now a wheelchair. Yet, like Jimmy Huega, Frank eagerly researches and will experiment with alternative treatments to battle his multiple sclerosis. “You’d try anything if you had this,” he tells me.
But when we last spoke, his news was not good. He had tried a new remedy, with some track record of success, but this time it had actually worsened things. Now, at 52, Frank is in a nursing home-requiring care around the clock. He still jokes (“My roommate is 96”), hopes for improvement, and is able to get home for a few hours each week and sometimes has lunch at a favorite restaurant.
You don’t see television commercials about new drugs to combat multiple sclerosis or its symptoms. You don’t receive e-mails urging you to try this “new MS drug.” It is allergies, erectile dysfunction, anxiety, depression, cholesterol and prostate trouble that seem to be front-burner conditions garnering all the attention. I guess there are not enough people with multiple sclerosis to warrant the research and marketing blitzkrieg that the pharmaceutical companies unleash for the most in-demand drugs.
Jimmy Huega, my friend Frank, and countless others realized that a long time ago.