Who is that pretty and always smiling lady seen using her red, three wheeled walker all over Atenas Central and at almost every Gringo party? She is Jean Ivins Lively, my wife of forty five years.

Jean and I met in 1960 when she was a freshman and I was a junior in college. Four years later when she graduated we married.

Six months after that, at age 22 while working as a sales clerk during the Christmas season at Macy’s Department Store in San Francisco, California, Jean realized that she could not make change for a sale without looking at the coins. She had lost the ability to feel the difference between coins of different sizes. It is called the ‘glove effect’ since what one feels is as if they were wearing gloves. Her general tactile loss was attributed to a pinched nerve and treated by physical therapy.

Between 1964 and 1971 we had four children and if Jean had any MS symptoms they were masked by the stress and strain of having and caring for a raft of kids.

The first really troublesome symptom began in 1978 after we had moved to Virginia. Jean’s right leg developed controls of its own; sometimes when she told it “go”, it wouldn’t, and then at other times her leg just flexed on its own. This came and went and came again, and after a brain tumor was ruled out, our family doctor sent Jean to a neurologist and via a spinal tap he strongly suspected and began to talk about MS as a probable cause.

Still, Jean’s MS was not diagnosed until many years later. In the early days the doctors talked about “a pinched nerve,” hypoglycemia, and viral infections. From time to time additional symptoms like slurred speech and blurred vision appeared, got worse, and then went away Some like leg muscle spasticity, incontinence, and the far more serious inability to void, came and stayed. Fatigue was, and is constant.

With the availability of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI, the growing suspicion of MS became an announced diagnosis in 1978. We were very frightened by the fact of what one only hears about as a terribly debilitating and sometimes life threatening disease. Jean volunteered with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s National Office in Washington, DC, and we both read a lot and attended workshops and seminars to learn to understand the disease rather than fear it, and then to learn to live with it.

Over the years with the assistance of medication, therapy and mobility aids we have managed to live what most would describe as a pretty normal life.

Decreased strength, mobility limitations, and an active day of half the time of most people, calls for some additional planning, but has not kept us from doing what we want, including moving to and building a retirement home here in Atenas, Costa Rica, and even doing some serious sport fishing and in other ways exploring the beauty of our other country.

We first came to Costa Rica in 1989 for a two week language and cultural homestay program offered by ILISA in San Pedro. Jean walked unaided at this time and we enjoyed the trails of Guayabo, Monteverde and Jardin Lankaster. As she moved to first a cane and then a walker we relied more on cars and boats to get to interesting sites and pursued a variety of gamefish both in Costa Rica and elsewhere. (She has caught bragging size dorado, yellowfin tuna, king and silver salmon, and small mouth bass.)

Two years ago Jean’s MS changed from the exacerbating and remitting variety to secondary progressive. So now instead of new symptoms appearing, growing in their effects and then regressing to a state just a little worse than before, we are on a slow but constant diminution of mobility and strength. So while we can do it, we do it! Recently that has included inshore trolling out of Puntarenas on the Aquaholic, and kayaking the mangrove estuary with Jowen and Stefanie Sapiano.

After that first trip to Costa Rica in 1989 we vacationed almost every year here staying in various small hotels and bed and breakfasts throughout the country. About six years ago we “discovered” Atenas and have been coming here since then. Finally, a few years ago we bought a piece of a former coffee finca in San Isidro de Atenas, and in 2006 built a home.

When we finally get all the papers together we will apply for Pensionado Resident status and will spend all but two months per year here. In Costa Rica we can afford home visits by physical therapists, and enjoy the assistance of a gardener/handyman and a full time housekeeper/cook/personal assistant to Jean and Terry, my sister who is also disabled and lives with us.

In the North these necessities for us, are luxuries out of reach. In the future if Jean or Terry requires full time assistance we can hire a maid to assist Mariluz, our housekeeper. We prefer that plan over the specter of an assisted living or skilled care facility.

A national expert on MS, Dr. Dennis Chinchilla Weinstock cared for Jean during a serious exacerbation in 1998 and we visit him from time to time at his offices in Alajuela or at Hospital CIMA. He and his father, also a neurologist, ran the Interferon/Betaferon trials in Costa Rica that were conducted by a team at Georgetown University in the US.

Cognitive issues are part of MS, and today Jean found herself suddenly without two needed medicines. My car was in the shop. What to do? Only in Atenas can one call Dra. Candy of Linea Vital who will telephone a prescription to Farmacia Central where Roxana will put the medications in a taxi and send them to our home. Less than an hour from discovered need to meds in hand. Pura Vida is not just a slogan on a t-shirt!

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Written by Martin Lively. Martin and his wife Jean are from Leesburg, Virgina and first visited Costa Rica in 1989, they travelled here nearly every year and eventually built a home in Atenas.