Durban - Playing a round of golf is not just a walk in the park for Cindy Goldie who has multiple sclerosis (MS) and needs to pace herself carefully to counter fatigue and walk with her club on the ground in front of her.
“I can’t always see the uneven terrain. Friends must watch where my balls go,” she told the Independent on Saturday, before an MS South Africa-KZN branch event due to be held on April 1 at Kloof Country Club.
The organisation, which provides support for the chronic disease that affects the central nervous system, has about 120 active members in the province.
However, the heart and lung transplant co-ordinator will give it a go. In her fourball will be photographer Matthew Legemaate, 24, who was once her patient and inspires her “to keep getting up each day and carry on with my job”.
“We feed each other,” she quipped.
Preparing for the course involves resting a lot before a game and resting a lot afterwards, the same demands her challenging work requires.
But Goldie, 52, has coped.
“My job demands that sometimes I have to just go all out, hell for leather, for 12 to 24 hours. Then I’ll fall down afterwards and take a couple of days to recover.”
She said that during the July riots and looting when many staff could not get to the Busamed Gateway Hospital in uMhlanga, she had “five days of intense work”.
“There were 10 of us looking after the entire hospital. We were feeding patients, cooking for patients, treating patients, carrying their linen away. That was five tough days and I slept for three after that.
“I was done, so done. Three days later I woke up and said: ’Okay , I can function again.’”
Goldie, who this week was in rest mode after a bass fishing tournament at New Hanover last weekend, lives as active a life as she can in spite of having MS.
“But it’s certainly not what it used to be. The MS has definitely impacted on me. I enjoy fishing. We fish a lot. And snorkelling but I don’t scuba anymore. I’ve been active from when I was young, always giving sports a try,” said the holder of provincial colours for softball, which gave her a head start for golf when she started playing later in life.
Goldie said she valued the MS Society, which she joined six months ago.
There, she is reassured that she is not losing her mind, or being a hypochondriac “because today’s a sore foot, tomorrow it’s a spasm in the arm and a ringing ear and haven’t had a good night’s sleep and feeling so tired”.
“Just talking to others (with MS) I realise, gosh, I am not going crazy and it reassures me that I am not faking it.”
Goldie’s career has also taught her the value of awareness, whether it’s to do with MS or heart and lung transplants.
She said people often didn’t realise there were procedures in South Africa that could save lives and patients did not always need to raise millions of dollars for life-saving treatment overseas.
Although she was diagnosed with MS about two years ago, Goldie believes, in hindsight, that a water skiing accident about 20 years ago might have triggered it.
“I slipped four disks. The symptoms were always ‘must be my neck, must be my neck’ and working it backwards now, it probably was the MS starting.
“About 15 years and two neck surgeries later I presented with this optic neuritis, two years ago. A couple of months prior to that I had lost my taste and I had ringing in one ear. Then the pain started.”
Treatment has brought relief, she said.
“But what if I had been on it sooner?”
MSSA-KZN chairperson Dee Munks stressed the importance of starting treatment the day one is diagnosed and not wait for symptoms to appear.
“In theory, one can then stop the progress of the disease and keep one relatively symptom free“.
- To play in the MSSA-KZN branch golf day at Kloof Country Club on April 1, please call Karen Mawson at 082 729 5531, or email [email protected].
The Independent on Saturday