GREELEY — A North Colorado Medical Center neurologist with personal insight into one of the world’s most puzzling, and at times debilitating, diseases has become a poster boy for multiple sclerosis.
Dr. William Shaffer, diagnosed with MS during his second year of medical school, appeared in Fortune and Money magazines and in the New England Journal of Medicine as part of a National Multiple Sclerosis Society campaign to raise awareness about the illness he both treats and suffers from.
The ad also is running on two Reuter’s Times Square billboards through March.
While marketing campaign is good for the issue, Shaffer’s personal experience with the disease is invaluable for his patients, said Dr. Don Smith, president of the Medical Advisory Board for the Colorado Neurological Institute.
“I think from an empathy standpoint, understanding what a patient is trying to communicate, helps quite a bit,” Smith said.
“He also should be commended for facing something like MS, and deciding he didn’t want to run away from it,” Smith said.
Shaffer said his personal fight with the disease has allowed him to be a better doctor to those frustrated by the perplexing and shadowy symptoms of MS, which affects over 2.5 million worldwide.
“When someone comes to me for the first time, and I tell them I have MS, it changes the whole atmosphere,” said the 41-year-old, who grew up in Wheaton. Ill. “I have the benefit of knowing, sometimes first-hand, what people experience and then what to ask about.”
Before medical school and MS, Shaffer was a drummer with an “alternative power pop” band with some guys he met in college.
They dropped out of school and formed “The Breathers.” After the group folded Shaffer helped form another band — “Much Too Fantastic.”
Eventually, he put music behind him and studied pre-med at Rutgers University. He entered medical school and was dealing with its rigors when he woke up one day feeling as though his feet were on fire, Shaffer said.
“Then I felt a numbness from my waist down and I didn’t know what was going on,” he said.
After a series of exams, a neurologist in April 2002 finally diagnosed Shaffer with MS, an autoimmune disease that affects the body’s central nervous system. Nerves in any part of the brain or spinal cord may be damaged, so MS patients can have symptoms in many parts of the body.
The problems can include loss of balance, muscle spasms, numbness or abnormal sensation in any area, problems moving arms or legs and in coordination, double vision, rapid eye movement or hearing loss.
Depression and fatigue may also weigh on sufferers.
MS episodes can last for days, weeks or months and alternate with periods of reduced symptoms or remission. There is no known cure and no one has nailed down its cause.
Faced with these challenges, Shaffer said he nearly dropped out of school. “I thought I should quit medical school, I figured I was done.”
Shaffer said he decided to shift his studies to neurology to better understand MS and its mysteries.
Although he lost the use of one of his hands, Shaffer completed his schooling after showing his MS was not going to derail him.
“Some instructors did know I had MS and then I would show them I was fine and I went on from there,” he said.
During med school, he reunited with his high school sweetheart — whose family lives in northern Colorado — and the couple moved here after Shaffer got a job with the Greeley hospital.
“During my interviews, I told them everything about me,” Shaffer said. “I didn’t want to hide anything.”
Paul Scholar, an MS patient, said MS mired him in a muck-like fatigue that made everyday living difficult and carrying on business relationships almost impossible.
That changed when he met Shaffer at North Colorado Medical Center last year.
“Just getting up and taking the trash out was just such an ordeal,” said the 52-year-old small business consultant.
Scholar, who was diagnosed in Indiana 14 years ago, said Shaffer posed questions other neurologists never bothered to ask, and was able to modify his treatment so he could have a energetic, full life.
“He knew what I was going through and after just a few moments with him I had an ‘Ah ha’ moment,” Scholar said. “I feel like a new man now.”
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com.
