Multiple sclerosis didn’t stop local resident from reaching her goal

By Jennie Miller
C & G Staff Writer

HUNTINGTON WOODS — At the start, she couldn’t feel her feet below her ankles.

Halfway through, she lost feeling below the knees.

Almost to the top, her left side began to give way, and her thinking and speech were compromised.

Stricken with multiple sclerosis for the past 30 years, Huntington Woods resident Dina Kawer did what many couldn’t fathom — she climbed Masada, a mountain-fortress in Israel, reaching the top in two hours and 15 minutes and raising $11,000 along the way for a good cause.

The trip overseas was a lifelong dream, one that Kawer took in late June and early July with her father and daughter in tow, meeting up with a handful of family members who reside in Israel.

“As a Jewish person, to go to Israel, it’s going home,” Kawer explained. “It’s really important to a lot of Jewish people to make this trip. To travel there, not only with my daughter, but with my dad, who is a Holocaust survivor, is so significant to me. My mom passed away 13 years ago, and was never able to make this trip. We did this for her.”

The inspiration for the trip came about eight years ago, when Kawer’s daughter, Shanna Goldenberg, now 24, went to Israel with a local Jewish youth organization. While there, she climbed Masada, and made the decision to carry her group’s 30-pound water pack on her back, as a symbol that her mom was with her for the climb.

“She called me and said it was an amazing experience,” Kawer said, moved by her daughter’s symbolic act. “She said she wanted to make this climb because she thought I’d never be able to do it because I had MS. In that moment, I made a promise to myself that I would do it.”

When the plans came to fruition, Kawer knew it couldn’t just be about her accomplishment.

“I decided it would be selfish of me if I didn’t turn this into a fundraiser for MS,” Kawer said, and with the help of her son, Shay Goldenberg, 25, she created a Web site chronicling her story.

“My kids fanned it out through Facebook, and I fanned it out through anybody and everybody I could think of,” she said.

And then she began to train for the climb.

“MS is a disease where nerve conduction slows down,” Kawer explained. “Someone with this condition, it can literally shut you down. Every day, because I have MS, I walk with two canes. I need to stay in really good shape, so I do weight training every other day, and 600 crunches every day, and stretching exercises for my legs and my arms, and the cross-country ski machine, that’s my cardio training. And this is just my regular workout. I’ve been doing this for years. But I stepped it up.”

Another thing to take into consideration is the heat.

“Most people with MS are heat sensitive, so there’s danger in exercising to the point where we overheat, and your muscles can literally shut down,” she said. “I’ll get the pins and needles sensation, and I don’t feel the bottom of my feet. If I overheat, I can’t walk, I can’t lift my arms. So, going to the desert in the middle of the summer, I knew what I was up against. I was prepared for that mentally and I knew I had to get in the best physical shape.”

Her knowledge of the disease and its afflictions was spot-on. A cousin was armed with extra bottles of water to pour over Kawer every so often to keep her cool. Even though they left at 4:30 a.m., it was already 80 degrees outside. And the group had 1,300 feet to climb.

“I lost the feeling in both my legs below the knees about halfway up the mountain,” she said, adding that other hikers would pass by and offer her words of encouragement to keep going. “At one point, I passed off my canes, and used these handrails to hoist myself up these stone steps that were carved into the mountain. About two-thirds of the way up, I started to lose the coordination in my left arm, and the dexterity in my left hand. I could feel my body start to shut down from the heat. My speech slowed down. I started to feel really emotional. My cousin told me, ‘Dina, you can’t do this right now. You have to save your strength.’ So I just sucked it back down.

“I got to the top, and everybody who as at the top, family and strangers, they all burst into applause, and I just lost it. I started to cry. I looked up at the sky and I said, ‘Thank you, God’ in Hebrew and I said, ‘I did it, Mommy.’”

Kawer’s body shut down completely minutes later, and the group waited for the cable car to take them back down the mountain.

“I saw the mountain I had just climbed, and I thought to myself, … ‘How did I just do that?’” Kawer said. “This is a power greater than me that allowed me to be able to do this. It was an out-of-body experience. I went into a very focused meditation to allow me to be able to do this.”

Kawer has unbelievable drive and determination, according to Leslie Cota of the Michigan Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which is based in Southfield.

“Dina is an extraordinary individual who pushes herself to not let anything stand in her way to achieving her dreams, including multiple sclerosis,” Cota said. “She is truly an inspiration to others who are battling the disease.”

But Kawer doesn’t think of herself that way.

“I’ve had MS for 30 years,” Kawer said. “I started having symptoms when I was 19 or 20 and I was diagnosed when I was 21. What else are you going to do? This is my circumstance, and nothing is going to stop me. I’ve got so much to do.”

A record of Kawer’s adventure up Masada was captured on film by a cousin who intended to make a documentary. Unfortunately, the camera, along with the disc containing the footage, was stolen from a piece of luggage that had gone missing during the flight back to the United States. The luggage was recovered, minus the camera. Kawer is desperate to locate and recover the missing equipment.

“There’s a slim chance we’ll recover it — but you just never know,” said the hopeful Kawer. “I just might have to go back and do it again.”

For more information on Kawer’s adventure or to donate to the MS Society in her name, visit the Web site, www.howwilligetbackdown.com. For more information on the MS Society, visit the Web site, www.nationalmssoceity.org/mig.

You can reach Staff Writer Jennie Miller at jmiller@candgnews.com or at (586) 279-1108.