KEEP ON MOVING

By Traci Angel

Just try to keep up with Dina Mishev.

When home in Jackson, she’s on her road bike. She logs hundreds of miles weekly, training for races and just getting around town. Her freelance travel-writing career has her juggling social plans between plane itineraries. And when you do see her – her arms and legs toned from hours of pedaling – she extends a handful of new ideas about work, life and the nonprofit she is creating.

Her constant motion is a contradiction to the diagnosis she received almost three years ago. Mishev, 33, has multiple sclerosis, a debilitating disease that affects the way the nerve cells and the brain communicate. The unpredictable condition can slowly immobilize a person, making even walking difficult.

A threat of losing her active ways has affected Mishev in the very opposite way: She never stops. And she wants others with MS to keep traveling and seeing the world through a nonprofit called Never Too Weak to Wander, which will kick off in June. She’s going to raise money through awareness in her bike races countrywide. Her fundraising effort is Biking For Better Odds, and she’s seeking sponsorship through the drug company from which she receives treatment to attend races. She’ll count the miles she covers, with a goal of recording 10,400 in the U.S. That’s one mile for every new person in the U.S. diagnosed with MS annually. In the end, the money raised goes to help people with MS keep booking tours to visit destinations they’ve only dreamed about.

The diagnosis

Every time Mishev moved she wanted to throw up. The nausea continued for a month. During another stretch, the world rocked about her as if she were on a boat. A doctor prescribed Valium. Then, in 2006, she started seeing double, as if she were intoxicated. Knowing her eyesight was 20/20, she sought help. A doctor encouraged her to have an MRI. She worried the answer might slow her down.

Mishev grew up in Maryland, outside Washington D.C., and was always athletic. The 5-foot-10-incher was a runner and a Junior Olympian race walker. She attended Northwestern University and studied math, economics, statistics and computer programming. She loved writing letters and kept journals.

Though she moved to Jackson to be a ski bum, Mishev was no slacker: Her first job was a 9-to-5 position as a paralegal. She found another activity as a columnist at the News&Guide in a column called “In search of …” and realized she always had another idea to explore.

She decided she wanted to be “the female Tim Cahill,” a founding editor of Outside magazine, and began pursuing a career as a freelance writer. She sent out 1,483 queries to magazine and publications in 1999. They were blind pitches, but each was custom-made for articles she could write, specific to each publication.

Her persistence paid off.

Mishev now finds herself on business trips and coordinates them with races, as she recently did in the Tour de Tuscon while pitching her second book idea.

Her husband, Brian Harder, calls her “pathological” in her activity level, whether work or play.

“She has a ton of irons in the fire,” Harder said.

Following the MRI, Mishev’s then-friend-now-husband Harder, walked out of St. John’s Medical Center. He began crying as he told her the news. With his medical background as a physician assistant, he knew what physical limitations could lie ahead for her. The diagnosis was MS.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in which a person’s own immune system starts attacking the central nervous system. It can transform the way a person moves and thinks. The name refers to scars, plaques or lesions in the white matter of the brain or spinal cord.

“The little I did know about it was wheelchairs,” she said.

Wheelchairs didn’t fit her lifestyle.

“I want so much what everyone in Jackson does” – to be physically active, she said.

After the diagnosis she called her parents and a neurologist in Bozeman, Mont. Then she continued with travel plans to City of Rocks, Idaho.

“I didn’t want to sit at home and think about it,” she said.

She couldn’t completely escape. She immediately wanted to expedite her adventure list – which included climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, rowing across the Atlantic and biking cross country – to just a few years. The urgency has since calmed, and to savor her mobility, she jumps on her bike every chance she gets.

Her treatment is also part of her routine. She has an MRI once a year to see if there are any new lesions, or scars, in the white matter of spine or brain. She also injects herself weekly with a drug called Avonex, which is in the drug class Interferon. Avonex suppresses the immune system in some way, but no one knows exactly how or in which person it might work, she said.

Last winter Mishev realized she was depressed. An MRI revealed a new lesion in the cranial lobe, known for controlling mood.

Yet so far, MS has made little impact on her life, she said.

“She’s done her best to basically ignore the disease,” Harder said, “and it has not limited her on any level.”

Creating a nonprofit

Finding oneself with a potentially physically limiting disease can be lonely in athletically driven Jackson. Mishev tried Internet chat groups for support but found the tone often took a pessimistic twist. Some people felt sorry for themselves. That’s not Mishev’s style.

She attended an MS conference in September hosted by the makers of Avonex, a drug she takes weekly. She met a woman who dreamed of going to a dude ranch but knew that flying would be mentally taxing for her. Mishev discovered that others feared traveling with MS, and the effects of cognitive or physical limitations kept them at home or made them modify their plans. Mishev could not imagine staying home. Why couldn’t people with MS travel if they found ways to accommodate their physical situations? she wondered.

Mishev envisioned a way to tailor vacation plans to each MS person who applied. She would establish a nonprofit, Never Too Weak to Wander, and direct people to the Web site www.nevertooweaktowander .org, which will be up and running this spring.

She’d get the message out while riding her Felt F3C. Her first plan was ambitious: to bike an estimated 100,000 miles, one for each person with MS who doesn’t receive treatment.

She has since scaled back her goal to 10,400 miles, one mile for each American diagnosed with MS annually. Signing up for MS 150 rides, a series of fundraisers for the disease across the country, would be the perfect vehicle for her message.

She’s applied for sponsorship from drug company Biogen Idec to travel to races next year to start logging those 10,400 miles. The Web site she’s creating will channel private donations to the nonprofit’s fundraising arm, Biking for Better Odds. The site will also track Mishev’s races and begin the search and application process for people with MS who wish to travel through the program.

“I’d love to have invitations and suggestions on where to ride and incorporate a social networking system,” she said.

She will start logging the miles in June. The timing will coincide with the third anniversary of her diagnosis.

“It will be like celebrating and realizing that I’m not much worse off,” she said.

Burning rubber

The miles slip under Mishev’s wheels.

She returned to Jackson in early December from El Tour de Tucson. She came in 630th place overall, out of more than 8,000 riders in the 109-mile segment of the event. That qualified her for platinum level, which allows her to start at the front of the pack in a future race.

Mishev wants to win LOTOJA, a 206-mile race from Logan, Utah, to Jackson, held every September. The grueling competition involves three mountain passes and is one of the longest races in North America.

She rode her first LOTOJA in 2006, three months after she was diagnosed as having MS. She was the fifth fastest woman that year. In 2007 she was fourth fastest in Category 4.

Mishev moved to Category 3, a more competitive level, in 2008. Tired and sore, she maneuvered within the lead chase pack and encountered a climb around mile 180, south of Hoback, just miles from the finish line. Her exhilaration at possibly crossing first plummeted when a flat tire resulted in a pit stop. She quickly fixed the tire and quickened the pace spotting the group up ahead. With the leaders in sight, she noticed another flat.

She would have to wait another year for a win.

But it was a personal victory for her.

“It was the first time I wasn’t thinking about MS at all,” she said.

She’ll keep pedaling, with the goal of helping others with MS remember they are never too weak to wander.