The Board of Directors elected Stephen J. Miller to serve as the next Vice President of The Transverse Myelitis Association

One crisp November morning somewhere around 3:30, I stirred, awoke, got up and went to use the bathroom and then went back to bed. At 7:00 that same Friday morning, as was the Miller home's daily routine, my mother came into my room to wake me for school. I can remember her words very clearly still, "Stephen, its 7:00 and time to get up and get moving." I looked to her and said, "Ma…I can't. I can't get up." Now, being a typical 13-year-old boy and having a well-earned reputation for pranks, my mother didn't give it a second thought. She smiled, went downstairs and began putting breakfast together.

Around 7:10, she called up the stairs for me to be getting ready for school. Again, I said, "Ma, I can't get up. I can't move - really;" only this time she didn't hear me, because my voice was so weakened that even talking loudly came out only as a whisper. She came up to my room again thinking I had fallen back to sleep and was surprised to see me wide-awake. She (again) reminded me of the time and my dwindling opportunity to get any breakfast before the school bus came. I told her, "I can't move, Ma. I can't move anything. It's like my whole body fell asleep and it won't wake up."

That moment in time is very significant because it was the pre-cursor to the next moment. The next moment in time is burned into my memory. It was the realization that sometime in the past 3 ½ hours, something had gone terribly wrong. Something very real, something very unknown and something very frightening.

That day, Friday, November 18, 1983, not only kicked off the worst weekend I've ever known, but it also marked the first day of the rest of my life.

My mother is an R.N. and so is the neighbor lady from across the street, so the two of them put their heads together and did a quick evaluation before the doctor was called. After talking to the doctor, I was taken to the E.R. at Mercy Hospital in Portsmouth, Ohio (the closest town to us and about 30 minutes away) where our family doctor met us. He was just as baffled as the next guy and began searching for clues.

By 2:30 that afternoon they had run out of ideas and options and had began calling pediatric specialists around the state hunting for ideas. The decision was made to take me to Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio via ambulance and we left for the two-hour trip by 3:00. My condition had worsened to the point where I had a fever, was beginning to vomit and still had difficulty breathing.

We arrived at Children's Hospital, were met at the door and taken straight to room 505, bed A just about 5:15. It was then the "real" work began in the search to understand why a normal, healthy, active, 13-year-old boy with no history of illness and having not so much as a drippy nose went from perfectly normal to completely paralyzed in just over three hours.

The tests began that night at 9:00 with the first of three mylograms. Testing took a break Saturday morning around dawn and continued off and on all weekend. Monday morning brought the first session of physical therapy. There would be four years more of them to follow.

They still did not know what had caused my paralysis or what the prognosis would be, or for that matter, what it could be. I was finally diagnosed several weeks later by a pediatric neurologist as having Transverse Myelitis.

I left the hospital a week before Christmas and was back in on New Years day with a bladder infection. I was sent home again two weeks later and was in and out of the hospital several times again over the next few months as my body adjusted to it's new state of "normal."

In the spring of 1984, I entered Ohio State University's Physical Rehabilitation Unit, Dodd Hall. I thought I had adjusted to life just fine up to that point, but then came the Sunday afternoon when I moved in to Dodd. It seemed pretty uneventful until Monday morning when I met my new P.T. Her name was Laura and she explained the rules and how things worked with P.T. and O.T. and scheduling, etc.

During my time at Dodd Hall, I celebrated my 14th birthday; witnessed two deaths (one of which was my roommate) and saw several people quit the rehabilitation game. But I also saw other things…some very important things. Things like seeing someone learn to sit up again, and learn to stand again, and learn to use crutches and take a step or two again. I saw people with severe disabilities much, much worse than mine; laugh at themselves and their situation. I saw a quadriplegic dance and I saw a man with a wheelchair ride a wheelie down a flight of steps (on purpose) and revel in our cheers and applause at such a task. I saw humor and personalities reborn and people learn to adjust and compensate and to "try, try again" and smile all the way back to their room for what they had accomplished. I saw several people, who had arrived in a wheelchair, walk out the front door to the waiting car on there own power the day they left the hospital. I was one of those.

I went home from Dodd Hall ready to take on life, as I now knew it - as a boy with Transverse Myelitis. A condition that nobody understood and a term I still had difficulty pronouncing.

And so it was for Stephen, and as it has been for so many of you. Stephen lived his life. He went to college to become an architect. He met his beautiful wife, Michelle, who has a degree in biology and library science. Michelle and Stephen got married and started their wonderful family. They have two daughters, Katherine and Elizabeth. The Miller family lives in Jamestown, Ohio, a small farming community near Dayton. After the onset of TM, Stephen lived the next 18 years of life and never met another person who had TM. Also, like so many of you, Stephen, on a whim, typed Transverse Myelitis into his web browser and found the TMA. This was a Wednesday. That night I received a phone call from Stephen and we talked for a while and arranged to meet for lunch the following Saturday.

When Pauline walked in the door of the restaurant, she was the first person that Stephen had ever met with TM. After 18 long years, Stephen was introduced to the TM community. We sat in the restaurant and talked for the next six hours! Stephen and Pauline had so much in common and shared so many similar experiences; similar onset symptoms, both going through rehabilitation at Dodd Hall, both walking with canes, both having left foot pedals installed in their cars.

In a very short time, Pauline and I got to know Stephen really well. We asked him to get involved in the Children's and Family Workshop. Stephen gave one of the speeches to the families to open the workshop and he participated throughout the weekend as a companion to the children with TM and their siblings. He has taken a leadership role in developing the Ohio Support Group. And he has provided tremendous support to Pauline and I in assisting with the TMA mailings and also getting actively involved in fundraising efforts.

Stephen brings so much experience and talent to the TMA. He is extremely bright and creative. He is also a wonderful communicator. Perhaps most importantly, Stephen has a very large heart; he is filled with compassion, kindness and sensitivity. We are very excited to have Stephen involved in the TMA and we know that Stephen is really honored to serve this wonderful community of people with TM, recurrent TM, ADEM, and Devics and their caregivers. We know that Stephen will serve you with honor, with enthusiasm and with humility. Thank you, Stephen for taking on this awesome responsibility. We are so pleased that you finally found the TMA and we are so grateful for your willingness to serve in this important role.