When Cheri Dotson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 24, her sisters and mother cried, but she didn’t. She could have cried, she said, gotten a headache and still had the diagnosis. So she just kept moving forward.

When her multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 2000, Dotson knew nothing about the disease. According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, nearly 1 million people in the U.S. have the central nervous system disease, which can damage the nerves and make it difficult, if not impossible, to walk, among other issues.

She initially thought she suffered from low blood pressure because she was always thirsty and orange juice was the only drink that satisfied her thirst. So, she went to see a doctor to find out. A spinal tap showed she had MS.

“At first, I was good with it,” she said. “Then, it started to get worse.”

Dotson was treated with three different medications during the first years. They all worked for a while. The fourth one was Tysabri. When she looked it up on the computer, she learned that it has more serious side effects than the others.

“I got down and cried. I cried and prayed. I called my father,” who is a pastor. “He prayed with me.”

Dotson decided to take the risk after praying. Her first treatment was the following day, and that afternoon, she was able to take a walk around the neighborhood with her children.

“Some people get really mad at the world,” said Sherrol Patterson, associate director of the Home Care and Patient Assistance Grant Program at the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation. But Dotson “always has a good attitude despite all the pain she goes through.”

Patterson nominated Dotson for the Miami Herald Wish Book.

The combination of her disease and her limited Social Security benefits make it hard for her to maintain the house, Dotson said. She said she needs a new refrigerator, a stove, a washer and a dryer. The appliances she has are very old and break down a lot.

Born in Indianapolis in 1976, Dotson has been in Miami since 1990, when her father, a Second Baptist Church pastor, was asked to work at the Richmond Heights Church and the whole family moved. She was 14.

Dotson studied for an associate’s degree to be a medical assistant. She had two sons with her first husband, and later, a daughter. She worked for a short time as an X-ray technician.

“But I was taking time off from work all the time,” she remembers. “I had no feeling in my hands, no feeling in my feet, and no feeling in the whole right side of my body. I started to get tired more often and I had to stop.”

After the multiple sclerosis diagnosis, Dotson applied for disability, but it took her four years to get it after she was denied three times. The fourth time, she said, the judge ruled she was disabled after he saw her walking to court.

Dotson said many times her father told her to ask God why He had given her MS.

“I said, ‘He allowed me to get it for a reason,’” she said. “I asked God what he wanted me to do with this?”

So, Dotson joined Cynthia Lyons, a long-time friend and fellow church-goer who also has MS, in founding a multiple sclerosis support group in Miami in 2013 to encourage people, educate them about treatments and living with symptoms, and to be an outlet for people with MS to talk about their experiences. This became the Joyous Healthy Living Multiple Sclerosis Support Group, and it drew people from many different backgrounds.

The support group met once a month, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to halt the meetings.

From not knowing how to manage her own disease, Dotson became an advocate for the support group. Despite the limitations the disease sometimes puts on her, Dotson is present whenever they need her, said Lyons.

“Cheri is a very loving and supporting person,” said Lyons.

“She is very determined,” said Elmore Dotson, her current husband. “She is not a person that sits around and looks for self-deprecation.”

Dotson said she met her husband at church when her family first came to Miami. She fell in love with him some years after his wife died of breast cancer. They were married in October.

“I saw how he took care of her,” she said. “Some time later, he asked me to marry him. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said, ‘yes.’”

“I said, ‘I don’t want you to have another wife that dies,’” said Dotson. “And he told me, ‘If I do, then that’s just how it has to be.’”

He has supported her through all her treatments, she said. Her daughter, Na’yalah, 18, is soon to graduate from Palmetto High School and start college. She helps her around the house

MS is a disease that isolates people, said Lyons, and just coming together to share their testimonies does a whole lot of good for people suffering this.

Dotson still has dreams. Bolstered by her success in starting the support group, Dotson wishes to go back to college and study health services and business, then open a clinic to help people living with MS.

“Maybe God gave her this thing for a reason,” said Elmore Dotson. “To reach out and touch other people.”

HOW TO HELP

Wish Book is trying to help hundreds of families in need this year. To donate, pay securely at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook. For information, call 305-376-2906 or email wishbook@miamiherald.com. (The most requested items are often laptops and tablets for school, furniture, and accessible vans.) Read more at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook.

This story was originally published December 29, 2020 at 6:00 AM.