Several years ago, Donna Lopez pulled into the parking lot of her Southshore job, threw her car in park and sat in silence, staring out the window.

She was scared. Her nerves were frayed. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I couldn’t remember how I got there,” the Abita Springs mother of one said. “And I took the same road I took every day for years.”

Shown are Donna Lopez, with her husband, Mike, and 13-year-old son, James.

Then it hit her. While dropping her son, James, off at school moments earlier, her foot slipped off the brake pedal, and she nearly careened into a pack of students playing in the school yard.

“I called my husband and told him this was it. I’m never driving again,” she said.

It was evident, she said, that she was finally losing her battle with multiple sclerosis.

Lopez is one of 2.3 million people worldwide infected with the debilitating disease that causes the nervous system to slowly eat itself from the inside out. Of those infected, 400,000 live in the United States with 4,000 in Louisiana, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In St. Tammany, 256 people are infected, said Louisiana Chapter President Brian Berrigan.

The disease strikes at random and causes one’s immune and nervous system to target itself, attacking cells, tissues and organs, leaving those infected with little control of their bodies. It dissolves the sheath connected between nerves that sends electrical impulses from nerve to nerve, making driving and walking difficult, if not impossible. In later stages, patients can’t even chew or swallow.

FIRST DIAGNOSED

In 1997, Lopez and her husband, Mike, a manager at a Southshore financial firm, were vacationing at a friend’s house in Lake Jackson, Texas. It was a bonding experience, a chance to get away, she said. Then she woke up one day with a tingly sensation shooting down her arm.

She thought it was the air mattress she slept on, a result of her arm falling asleep.

But days later the feeling still pricked at her. A doctor’s visit was scheduled. After numerous tests for carpel tunnel, a visit to a hand specialist and ultimately an MRI, she was finally diagnosed with MS. She was 37 years old and contemplating another pregnancy.

At first she breathed a sigh of relief. Lopez, who worked the front desk at a Kevlar vest testing facility, prayed it wasn’t Lupus, another debilitating disease that was better known at the time.

She admits, like others, she didn’t know much about the disease. But the moment she returned home after her diagnosis she logged on to the Internet. The symptoms on the screen thumped her like a sledgehammer.

“I was such in panic mode,” she said after researching the subject and logging into chat room groups.

Fiercely independent, she now wondered how she would get to her son’s baseball games, go grocery shopping, cook and clean. Was her life over?

The disease struck slowly. For years, she continued walking her dog, Missy, a jack Russell terrier, and even helped her family move from the Southshore to Abita Springs nearly six years ago. Her body wasn’t as agile as it was before, but she managed, she said, always trying to look on the bright side.

But after 11 years, Lopez’s condition worsened. Her fingers are now crinkled and crooked, making it difficult to type or get a job. She often drops dishes and glasses, shattering them on the floor because her hands can’t hold on.

She has trouble walking and mostly uses a walker with a built in seat in case she has to sit down immediately. And when asked what she misses the most, she started to tear up, her family looking on.

She briefly stopped herself from crying.

“To be idle is the hardest thing in my life,” she said. “I was always independent.”

FRIENDS NETWORK

Thanks to a group of 20 friends, her husband and 13-year-old son, Lopez said her life isn’t bad.

She accepted the fact she has MS yet is thankful she can still ask for rides to cheer her son on at baseball games and work diligently on her son’s school’s PTA board. And when possible, Lopez attends yoga for those with MS, twisting and contorting her body as much as possible in an effort to stave off the effects. It is her “weeble time,” she said, laughing.

It’s that smile, coupled with her sandy brown hair and willingness to talk openly about the disease that has inspired friends and family. At any given time, 20 friends can be called to give her a ride anywhere she wants to go, she said. And she doesn’t shy away from kids in the grocery store staring at her.

“I’m not embarrassed,” she said. “This is a disease, and people need to know it can happen to anyone. If somebody wants to know what is wrong with me I tell them. It’s no big deal. People have to be aware.”

“This is our cross to bear,” Mike added, slurping on Abita Root Beer.

James, a Fontainebleau Junior High School student, smirked, too. He knows first hand what it’s like to grow up fast. Caring for an MS patient has instilled wisdom beyond his 13 years, his mother said. As his mother’s caretaker, James is no stranger to pausing video games to help her out.

“Now she asks like 10 to 15 times a day for something,” James said joking.

Lopez smiles again. “He’s going to make a great husband,” she said.

Mike has now become Mr. Mom, cooking and cleaning in addition to mowing the yard and performing handy work.

“I bet I’m the only guy in my office that knows grapes are 99 cents and cheap bacon is $2.29,” he said.

WHEN ALL IS

SAID AND DONE

At the end of the day, the Lopez family doesn’t want handouts. Their life has shifted into a well-oiled machine, working out financial and physical logistics with the help of Mike’s financial management background.

They’ve faced tough questions.

“People don’t like to thinking about wills … death,” Lopez said. “People don’t like to think about their own mortality.”

Although she spends most of her time confined to a walker and barely leaves the house, Lopez seems to smile often, joking about the disease she can’t do anything about.

“Stressed spelled backwards is dessert,” she said at her dining room table at her home off Harrison Avenue. “I go with the backward spelling.”