September 7, 2024 marked my 20-year anniversary of living with MS, and it is hard to believe that I have now been living with the disease longer than I lived without it. Although I have faced challenges and uncertainty related to MS over the last two decades, I have benefitted tremendously from the support of my ‘team’: my family, friends, mentors, and my medical team. This incredible support and groundbreaking MS treatment advances have enabled me to pursue my dreams and achieve my goals. As I work towards completing my own medical training in pediatric rheumatology next spring, I am forever grateful to all of you, and to my medical team for their compassionate care, their drive to push MS research forward, and their commitment to improving the lives of all of us who live with MS.
To commemorate this anniversary, Kate, Sandy and I will be lacing up our sneakers in early May to run the Providence Half Marathon together. The perseverance, strength, resilience, dedication–and even pain–required for distance running feels like the perfect metaphor for living with MS, and I am excited to embrace this challenge.
As many of you know, TeaM BryantS has been raising awareness and funds to support MS research since my diagnosis in 2004. This year, we are directing our fundraising efforts to support the research of Dr. Victoria M. Leavitt, a neuropsychologist at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Leavitt has dedicated her research to understanding aspects of living with MS that are essential to maintaining quality of life, including fatigue, cognitive changes, diet, sleep, exercise, social support, and mood. She conducts treatment trials to help people with MS exercise more comfortably. From my competitive basketball playing days to the intense Bryant family tennis matches and more recently to the running trails around New England, all of you know how important exercise has always been to me. Dr. Leavitt’s research has “kept me in the game” and I can’t think of a better way to honor the 20-year milestone than to raise funds to support this work. In addition, MS-related fatigue continues to be my most challenging symptom and it gives me hope that researchers like Dr. Leavitt are working to understand it and to find more effective treatments for it.
We are excited about the continued progress that Dr. Leavitt and her colleagues are making to better understand the complex pathology of MS. We will continue to support their research and raise awareness until we have accomplished the goal of ending MS forever.
As a small token of thanks to our supporters, Kate will be commissioning TWO watercolor paintings. One commission will go to the top donor and the second commission will be drawn from a raffle of all donors. We are so grateful for your continued support over the years and we extend our deepest thanks!!
To make a donation to TeaM BryantS, please visit:
Click on the “Support Me” button in the upper right corner.
If you would like to send a check, please make it payable to the Trustees of Columbia University, and indicate MS Brain Resilience Research/Team Bryants on the memo line and mail to:
Carrie Bryant
60 Longwood Avenue #309
Brookline, MA 02446
I will make sure it gets to the MS Brain Resilience Research Fund. If you have any questions, please contact us at teambryantsiblings@gmail.com. Thank you for your generosity and continued support of a cause that means so much to the entire Bryant family.
TeaM BryantS 