You never know what life has in store for you around the bend, but for a CPCA driver, you would certainly welcome health and a long career. The first and still only woman in the CPCA Amber L’Heureux was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis or MS this year.
The young talent who works as a librarian and basketball coach at Glaslyn Central School says she was heading to regionals in March with the senior boys’ basketball team when the vision in her right eye dwindled “to just a bit of light from the top.”
She says she thought she may have scratched her eye. They went to the basketball tournament and then she got in to see the doctor the next week.
“I got the tough news that my eye itself was fine, at the time they thought that my brain was fine, and they just thought that the nerve was giving me grief. They gave me a few things that it could have been and (MS) was one of them which was tough to hear,” says L’Heureux.
She says she got her first MRI in May and they found seven lesions on her brain. She adds her sight had recovered and not having any more episodes, the doctor said they would revisit her condition in six months. In the fall she went for another MRI and they called her the next day to relay the results.
“They found 10 new lesions in my spinal column and an additional five on my brain, so they had the evidence they needed to rule that I had MS,” says L’Heureux. She was fast tracked for a first round of treatment and is due for a second round in six months and it will be ongoing from there, adds the CPCA driver.
L’Heureux reflecting on her season says all her sponsors were made aware of what she was dealing with and have been very supportive including Swift-Net, McGowan Chartered Accountants, Top Gear Contracting, IronJet, Glaslyn Merchant Group, Y-Coulee Land & Cattle, Novlan Bros., and River View Equine.
L’Heureux is very open about her treatment saying she is on a drug called Ocrevus which is an immunosuppressant to target B-cells, and doctors are hopeful this will stop the progression of her MS, she says. She gets the treatment intravenously in Saskatoon.
“And hopefully I’ll be at this state I am right now, they are hoping upwards of 10-20 years.”
She says her 2023 season was good even though it was a lot to go through, but she is happy with it.
“I started the season with three outfits, but the way racing goes, I quickly went down to two solid outfits and I finished the season with those two outfits.”
L’Heureux gives a “huge shootout to her crew of Team Pink” and says she is really hopeful for 2024 that they will have “an amazing season.”
