Local nurse wins national award for supporting MG community

When Sally O’Meara, a registered nurse for 26 years, was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis (MG) three years ago, she could have easily chose to spend all of her time focusing on her own health.

O'Meara
O’Meara

But true to her selfless profession, the 49-year-old Oxford resident has been using her knowledge and position to help educate and support others with the chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease.

“My goal is to make their battles a little bit easier by sharing what I’ve learned,” said O’Meara, who’s spent the past 11 years as a special lecturer for the Oakland University School of Nursing.

For her efforts, O’Meara will be honored by the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) as the organization’s 2017 Nurse of the Year.

To her, it’s “really gratifying” the MGFA “noticed and appreciated” her work. She serves on the organization’s Nurses Advisory Board and works with several MG support groups.

“It’s working. I’m actually helping (people),” said O’Meara, who holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing.

O’Meara decided to become a nurse while working at a small nursing home in Romeo as a high school student.

“I completely fell in love with the profession,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Nursing is actually just part of who I am.”

Myasthenia Gravis is derived from Greek and Latin words meaning “grave muscular weakness.”

According to the MGFA, it’s characterized by a fluctuating weakness of the voluntary muscle groups.

“The immune system is attacking the body,” O’Meara explained. “The immune system is supposed to realize what’s mine and what’s an invader or alien, like an infection. My immune system’s gotten confused and it’s attacking the little portions where the muscles meet the nerves, so it causes my muscles to be weak.”

According to the MGFA, the prevalence of the disease in the United States is estimated to be about 20 in every 100,000 people, “however, MG is probably under diagnosed and the prevalence may be higher.”

Common symptoms include a drooping eyelid, blurred or double vision, slurred speech, difficulty chewing and swallowing, weakness in the arms and legs, chronic muscle fatigue and difficulty breathing.

For O’Meara, MG impacts her legs and respiratory muscles to the point where she uses a cane to walk and a breathing machine at times.

Prior to being diagnosed, she spent four years going from doctor to doctor, trying to find out what was wrong with her.

“I figured it out after about two years,” O’Meara said. “I teach pathophysiology and I have access to all of the university library databases. So, I did a ton of research . . . and I realized this is what I have.”

But despite her research and despite her credentials and years of experience in the medical field, the five or six neurologists she visited following her self-diagnosis insisted she was wrong.

“It’s really, really common, especially for women with autoimmune diseases, to go through many years of misdiagnosis, especially (with) MG,” she explained. “It easy for us to be dismissed.”

Doctors frequently told her all she needed to do was “go to the gym”; “manage your stress better”; or “go to a psychiatrist.”

“It’s not just me. It happens to many, many women,” said O’Meara, a native of Shelby Township and graduate of Eisenhower High School. “The average is about four to five years to get a diagnosis for a disease like this.”

It wasn’t until she visited a neurologist in Wisconsin that she was finally correctly diagnosed.

Looking back over the whole situation, O’Meara said, “It was incredibly frustrating. I started to question myself. Am I making this up? I actually went to a psychiatrist. She (watched) me walk and she said, ‘People who are making this up don’t walk like you do. You have a neurologic disorder.’”

That’s a big part of why she’s so dedicated to informing and helping others with MG, and educating folks in the healthcare field.

“Many, many people don’t realize what MG is,” she said. “It’s not MD (Muscular Dystrophy). It’s not MS (Multiple Sclerosis). It’s a muscle weakness disease. I would like to see the general public become a little bit more aware (of) it, but my main goal is to have healthcare providers become more aware of it, so that when an MG patient comes to them, they know how to treat that patient appropriately.”

To those with MG, O’Meara said, “They absolutely need to learn about the disease. They need to do as much research as they can (about) the terminology and the treatment.”

This knowledge is vital, she explained, because they need to be able to inform doctors and nurses about their condition and how to treat them if they wind up in a hospital for some reason.

“They cannot assume the healthcare providers will know how to treat MG,” O’Meara said. “They often don’t know what needs to be done . . . (MG is) very deceiving. MG patients can look like they’re fine . . . when in fact (they’re) in full-on respiratory failure.”

If for some reason an MG patient is unable talk, she said, “They need to make sure they have a patient advocate who can speak up and express that same information.”

O’Meara encourages people with MG to connect with others who have the disease through online support groups.

“People with rare diseases, they should know that there are some really fantastic support groups out there because chances are you’re not going to be able to find somebody who lives near you with the disease,” she said. “It makes the experience far less lonely and it’s easy to . . . find out more about treatment options and learn more about the disease.”

O’Meara loves the convenience of these online groups.

“I can log-on whenever I want. I don’t have to get dressed up. I don’t have to get in the car,” she said. “I can share concerns and connect with people all across the U.S. (and around the world). We can all get together, share information, share knowledge and bounce ideas off of each other.”

To learn more, visit www.myasthenia.org.

 

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