When Ohio couple Josh and Lauren Adkins vowed to stand by each other in sickness and in health, neither could have imagined that they would both be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Now the parents of two are committed to supporting each other as they continue to live their lives to the fullest.
Josh, 33, was diagnosed with MS in 2015, about a year after he and Lauren, 30, married. Just three months ago, Lauren learned that she too had the disease.
“In a weird way, it gave us peace because we knew what to expect,” Josh tells PEOPLE.
“We see how well Josh has done with his 10-year treatment,” adds Lauren. “He didn’t let that stop him from doing anything he wanted to do.”
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Josh and Lauren Adkins on vacation with their two children.
Josh and Lauren Adkins
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It has been a long journey for the strong couple. They both remember the desperation and uncertainty that drove Josh to tell Lauren that he would understand if she chose not to stay with her chronically ill spouse for the rest of her life.
The couple sat in the Mellen Center of the Cleveland Clinic and looked at all the patients with canes and wheelchairs. Josh couldn’t imagine putting the woman he’d loved since they were teenagers into the worst possible scenario of her illness.
“We were thinking, what kind of life will we live? And Josh looked at me and said, ‘You can leave me now. I just don’t want to be a burden,’ says Lauren. “There was a moment, maybe 20 minutes, we didn’t even talk because we were so nervous about where this was taking us.”
However, he never thought about leaving.
“I can’t imagine going through this with anyone else,” Lauren says. “And we always say, you’re my best friend.”
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The couple met in 2008 when Lauren was 14 and Josh was 17.
“We’ve been through all the waves of life, from high school to going into the military, and now the biggest hill we have to climb is the whole MS diagnosis,” says Lauren.
Both Lauren and Josh serve in the Air National Guard and also work civilian jobs. Josh’s path to enlistment initially hit a roadblock when a recruiter told him he needed to lose 100 pounds. before he could join.
“I showed up a year later with 100 pounds. lighter and couldn’t believe it,” says Josh. “I just got better, exercised more and ate less.”
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Josh and Lauren Adkins serve in the Air National Guard.
Josh and Lauren Adkins
Josh was at his best when things went wrong. It was a sweltering day, with temperatures reaching about 110 degrees in the store, and he developed a bad headache.
He had double vision on the drive home and when he arrived he asked Lauren to check his eyes. When she did, she saw that his right eye was looking to the left.
They immediately went to the hospital and after enduring many misdiagnoses over the next few days, he finally got an MRI which revealed the possibility that he had MS.
Although it was “terrifying” at first, with continued treatment, he can now lead a fairly normal life and the two have become parents to a daughter, 5, and a son, 4.
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Lauren and Josh Adkins with their son and daughter.
Josh and Lauren Adkins
Then the unthinkable happened.
Lauren worked out and started to lose a lot of weight. While shopping with a friend, she suffered what she thought was a stroke. It turned out that the MS.
“I kind of laughed when they told me and thought, ‘What are the chances?'” she says. “They started the treatment, but I’m only three months in, so I don’t know what my triggers are, what makes it better or what makes it worse.”
dr. Robert Bermel, Josh’s neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic, was shocked to learn about Lauren.
“The odds are literally close to one in a million that the spouse of a person with multiple sclerosis will develop the disease,” Dr. Bermel tells PEOPLE. “I’ve never seen that at the (Mellen) Center, and we follow about 12,000 patients.”
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Lauren says the couple had no idea what they were about to face when Josh was first diagnosed.
“If you asked me, I couldn’t even tell you what MS is,” she says. “So when I was diagnosed three months ago, I already knew a lot about it.”
One thing they have learned is that treatment has advanced tremendously over the years and can now be largely controlled with medication and lifestyle.
dr. Bermel explains that in the early 1990s, “MS was an incurable, chronic neurodegenerative condition” that has evolved into a condition for which the medical community has very effective therapies. “It essentially freezes the disease in time and doesn’t progress when we identify it early and give people effective treatment,” says Dr. Bermel.
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Josh and Lauren Adkins run a race before her diagnosis.
Josh and Lauren Adkins
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But no matter what, she and Josh know that multiple sclerosis has brought them closer, and both are committed to not letting their diagnosis define them.
“It doesn’t have to be a burden. You can still live and enjoy your life,” says Josh. “And if we can be someone’s light in dark times, I think that would be great.”
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Source: HIS Education