Welcome to Hail Media I'm Brian Wallace, MS Michigan Man 64, Left Tackle for Michigan Wolverines 1988-1991. This is where a former Wolverine gets real about life after football - battles you don't see coming and training that prepared us to take everything on!
Today I'm talking with Cassandra from Connecticut, diagnosed with MS in 2024 after experiencing vertigo while backing out of a parking space at her gym. A walk-in clinic dismissed it as vertigo, but her PCP got her into a neurologist fast. Cassandra got her diagnosis over the phone after an MRI - she had mentally prepared for a brain tumor, not MS.
Two years before diagnosis, Cassandra started hitting the gym to lose weight and get healthy for her two kids. When her neurologist saw she'd been training, he told her to thank her past self - staying physically fit is the best thing she could do for MS. Now she's a competitive powerlifter who's done three competitions in six months, deadlifting 210 pounds and white-dotting despite her leg muscles spazzing mid-lift.
We talk about movement being medicine, having coaches who adapt training for MS, refusing to let the diagnosis define you, and dealing with people questioning if you really have MS because you're "doing too much." Cassandra discusses toxic positivity accusations, the TikTok MS community support, and how her husband and daughters (18 and 9) are learning to understand the disease.
Her attitude: even if it doesn't count, she's not dropping the bar.
Follow Cassandra on TikTok @cass_gymbrat.1122.
Hit subscribe and share to help bring awareness.
Find me on Instagram and TikTok and Instagram @msmichiganman64 also FaceBook @Brian Wallace Brunswick, Ohio. Original podcast on YouTube, Spotify and Apple - MS Michigan Man 64.
Keep fighting. Go Blue!
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Hail Media is proud to add the MS Michigan Man 64 Podcast to the Hail Media family!
We also want to call your attention to Football Alumni of Michigan - an organization that we care deeply about. Follow them here at @michiganfootballalumni . FAM is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to mental health and assisting former Michigan team members with life's struggles after football, whether they are mental or physical. Division 1 football at the level we played it is brutal, and not all players come out of it in one piece. Visit www.michiganfootballalumni.org for more info and to make a tax-deductible donation.
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