Two months before the treatment that would change Lynn Montgomery-Haga’s life, she could barely walk down a hallway. In a test at the University of Colorado Anschutz, Montgomery-Haga struggled to walk 25 feet, often reaching out to the walls for support. Usually, the 49-year-old relied on her walker or wheelchair.
For about a decade, Montgomery-Haga had lived with a debilitating autoimmune disease known as stiff person syndrome. The progressive condition can lock up the body’s muscles without warning, leading to falls, broken bones, excruciating pain and difficulty moving. Singer Celine Dion, who returned to the stage in September after years of battling the disease, has said it can feel “like somebody’s strangling you.” Montgomery-Haga’s own days were marked by dizziness, fatigue and pain.
And sudden muscle spasms would send her sprawling. It was like the fainting goat videos popular on the internet, she says. It stripped Montgomery-Haga of her accounting job and her ability to drive.
She couldn’t sit up in bed unless she had a safety bar to pull on. If she dropped the soap in the shower, it’d take her 10 minutes to pick it up. Now, Montgomery-Haga hopes those struggles are finally coming to an end.
That’s because a clinical trial with an experimental therapy has helped restore mobility for her — and others like her. She can stride through her living room again. She can landscape her front yard.
She doesn’t have to brace herself when her dogs jump on her. And she hasn’t fallen once since the treatment. The change has been drastic, she says.
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