This Army veteran battles a new enemy: multiple sclerosis

MARYSVILLE — When Samantha Love joined the Army Reserve fresh out of high school, she was fulfilling a lifelong dream.

She was the sixth generation of her family to join the military, but the first woman to do so.

She told everyone in her family she would sign up, but no one believed her. “I graduated early just so I could join,” she said. She was 17.

Four years later, her career had taken a sharp turn. She was out of the service with a medical discharge after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

“After four years in, they tell you you’re done, and that was not my plan at all,” she said.

Now at age 25, four years out of the service, she’s focusing her life on Huck, her extremely active 17-month-old son, and on raising awareness and money to fund MS research.

On Thursday, she had Huck out in Jennings Memorial Park, where Huck was fascinated by the mulch under the play equipment and a stick he found and started swinging like a sword.

“I don’t know where he learned that,” she said, trying, and failing, to substitute a shorter stick less likely to poke out an eye. At Love’s prodding, Huck demonstrated his knowledge of animal sounds.

On Saturday, Love plans to take part in Walk MS: Snohomish at the Tulalip Amphitheater, one of many walks taking place across the U.S. to raise money and awareness for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. It’s Love’s fourth walk to date, and she’s going into it feeling pretty well.

“Every year when we had an MS walk I’ve had my cane, and this is the first year I won’t need one,” she said.

Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease thought to afflict 2.3 million people worldwide, according to the society, although the symptoms tend to differ from person to person and diagnoses are not always straightforward.

In Love’s case, it started with bad headaches and tingling in her legs while she was stationed at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where she was studying Farsi.

She’d initially wanted to be a firefighter in the Army, but she scored highly on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery tests, and it was suggested she become an interrogator. She thought that would be awesome.

After receiving an MRI scan that detected lesions in her brain, she realized that her time in the Army would be coming to a early end.

“I knew they were going to start the (discharging) process, and I really wanted to deploy,” she said.

She got her wish, going to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in February 2011. She stayed there for 100 days before her discharge papers came through.

Coming back to the U.S. and civilian life was rough.

“Once I was discharged I didn’t really have any counseling,” she said. “I was kind of left on my own.”

It took two years for her Veterans Administration benefits to be approved, so she reached out to the National MS Society when her medical bills began to pile up.

“I called them crying because I didn’t know if I was going to pay my medical bill or my electricity bill,” she said.

She later earned a master’s degree in education, having done her undergraduate work while in the military. She met Rob, married him in 2012, moved to Marysville, started substitute teaching, and then had Huck in late 2013.

She found a new passion to replace military service. She went on her first MS Walk in 2012 with Rob and her father, raising about $800.

The next year, she assembled a larger team and raised about $20,000. In 2014, she repeated the feat, bringing in $20,380.

This year, her team, “All You Need Is Love… And a Cure!” is a little smaller, about 15 people. She set their goal at $10,000 because one of her co-captains is participating in other MS events. The team has raised $2,845 as of Thursday.

Love plans to be an ambassador for MS for the rest of her life. In addition to the walks, she’s given a few speeches and appeared in a couple of videos for the National MS Society.

Nowadays, her symptoms consist of extreme fatigue and the partial loss of vision in her left eye.

She focuses on maintaining a good diet and getting exercise, which usually means taking Huck out for a walk every day.

She has good days, when she can almost imagine that her disease has receded. She has bad days when she worries she’ll wind up blind or in a wheelchair.

Love recently was turned down to receive stem cell treatment from a facility in Chicago, but still hopes to find another route toward reducing her symptoms.

In the meantime, she gets outside where Huck can run around the park or toss handfuls of dirt into the air and burn off his energy.

“He’s the perfect distraction,” she said. “It’s really hard to feel sorry for myself when I chase after him every day.”

On Saturday, Huck will be at the walk, cheering her on.

Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.

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The Walk MS: Snohomish event starts at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 11 at the Tulalip Amphitheater. Samantha Love’s team, “All You Need is Love… And a Cure!” hopes to raise $10,000 for the event. Visit the team website at http://bit.ly/1GQIXGm.