Olympic Runner, 30, Opens Up About MS Diagnosis Days Before Flying To Tokyo Games, After ‘Painful Electrical Shock’ Sensations

“There were a lot of things that didn’t make sense at the time,” she said in a recent Instagram post. “The first thing I remember, I woke up one morning with a numb arm and I thought I had just slept on it funny, it had a mind of its own. But it lasted two weeks.”

Looking back, Laviai also recalled that one winter she couldn’t feel the cold in her left hand. She found it “strange,” but the sensation eventually went away.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” she continued. “But later on, when I started racing, I would finish races with this sudden painful electrical shock feeling all over my body, kind of like when you hit your funny bone but all over my body.”

Again, she “put it down to other things.” It wasn’t until the British Championships in June 2021 that she realized something was seriously wrong.

“I didn’t think it was MS at all,” she said. “When I crossed the line, I actually temporarily lost feeling in my legs. Both legs. And it hit me like a truck that something wasn’t right, and that it was time to go to a doctor.”

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The first doctor she saw told her it could be a number of things. “It could have been stress or anxiety,” she said. But Laviai knew her body and was convinced something was wrong, so she sought a second opinion.

“I was firm and said something’s not right. I’m not supposed to feel electric shocks all over my body. This can’t be stress.”

The second doctor listened to her concerns and referred her to a neurologist “almost immediately.” She was diagnosed on July 13, 2021.

“Once I got that diagnosis, I felt like I could stop guessing,” she said.

Sharing her story with Telegraph Sport, Laviai revealed that things got even harder in Tokyo. After flying out for the Games, she learned she had been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 and had to self-isolate, which she called the “worst thing that could have happened to me post-diagnosis.”

Alone for two weeks with a new diagnosis, she said she “just went into panic mode,” unsure what to expect from such an unpredictable disease. She described it as one of the lowest points of her life, made even harder by the fact that she was at the Olympics she had spent eight years training for, and suddenly didn’t want to be there.

Despite the setback, Laviai lined up for Team GB’s 4x400m relay in Tokyo, where the squad placed fifth, and three years later she left Paris with a pair of bronze medals in the women’s and mixed relays.

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Multiple Sclerosis seemingly runs in the family, as Laviai’s identical twin sister, Lina, also has MS. According to Sky Sports, Lina first noticed symptoms at 13 and was diagnosed a month before her 18th birthday.

The sisters refuse to let MS hold them back, living instead by a simple mantra: “MS lives with us,” Laviai told the Telegraph.

Now, she is urging others to pay attention to subtle changes in their bodies: “Don’t put them in the back of your mind.”

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Understanding Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an “immune mediated condition,” which causes the immune system to work against itself, Dr. Lauren Krupp, a neurologist at NYU Langone in New York City, told SurvivorNet in an earlier interview.

MS causes the immune system to attack cells that form the protective sheath that covers nerve fibers in the spinal cord. The disruption leads to communication problems between the brain and the rest of the body.

Once the protective barrier is damaged, the spinal cord struggles to send messages to the arms, legs, and other parts of the body to function normally.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society outlines the different types of multiple sclerosis:

• Clinically isolated syndrome (CIS): This is when an individual experiences a single neurological episode lasting 24 hours or less. CIS is what MS is diagnosed as until there is a second episode.
• Relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS): The most common MS among the million people battling the disease in the US, RRMS is marked by sudden flare-ups, new symptoms, or worsening of symptoms and cognitive function. The condition will then go into remission for some time before reemerging with no known warning signs.
• Primary progressive MS (PPMS): These individuals have no flare-ups or remission, just a steady decline with progressively worse symptoms and an increasing loss of cognitive and body functions.
• Secondary progressive MS (SPMS): This is an almost transitional form of MS that progresses from RRMS to PPMS.

In addition to balance issues, numbness, and tingling in the limbs, other common MS symptoms include vision and bladder control problems. Mood changes and mental and physical fatigue are other symptoms people living with MS may experience, according to the National Institute of Health.

There is no single symptom that definitively indicates someone has multiple sclerosis (MS). MRI scans play a critical role in diagnosing the condition, Dr. Krupp explained, before noting that symptoms of MS are “really very varied” due to the disease’s ability to impact different areas of the brain and spinal cord.

Symptoms can range from numbness and tingling in the face to muscle weakness to vision loss.

MS: What To Know About Symptoms

Dr. Krupp described MS as an “immune mediated condition,” which causes the immune system to work against itself.

“We’re not exactly sure why that happens, but it probably has to do with an exposure to a virus at some point in time. And in the effort to fight off that virus, the immune system turns against itself and specifically, a coating of the nerves called myelin,” Dr. Krupp explained.

“The myelin that it affects involves the central nervous system, and that’s the brain and the spinal cord.”

Because it can involve different areas in the brain or spinal cord, Dr. Krupp explains, “the symptoms can vary in location.”

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Symptoms might include:

• Numbness and tingling in the face
• Numbness or weakness in the arms and legs
• A sensation of vertigo or rooms spinning
• Vision loss or blurred vision
• Lack of coordination

Symptoms may affect one side of the body or, when the spinal cord is involved, both sides. In some cases, the numbness can spread and may also come with muscle weakness.

“Usually we see people who have had some neurological symptoms and they often get worked up with an MRI of the brain … the brain MRI is a really important tool,” Dr. Krupp adds.

After being diagnosed with MS, treatment will depend on what type you have and what symptoms you are dealing with. It also helps, Dr. Krupp said, to learn, specifically, what the MRI showed and the evolving options for people in your situation.

“MS is a disorder. That’s a combination of a genetic predisposition and environmental factors. And those interactions probably have happened during your childhood or adolescence. So when you present with your first symptoms years later, there’s nothing that you did that caused it,” Dr. Krupp added.

“It’s not your fault. And the likelihood is that your offspring will not have MS … They’re at a slightly higher risk than if you did not have MS, but likelihood is they will not have it.”

Despite the stress of an MS diagnosis, Dr. Krupp offered encouraging news. People with MS are doing “amazingly well” these days.

“It’s much different than it used to be. It’s a very rewarding space for me to be in because I see how well people are doing today,” she said. “Don’t feel without hope, because I think one, the likelihood is if you’ve just been diagnosed that you’ll do well. And there’s a lot of research going on that’s there to make things even better than they are.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Nancy Siconne, Chair of Neurology, Director of Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology at Cedars-Sinai, told SurvivorNet, “There’s more than 25 different treatments available now for MS. They fall into a much smaller number of classes of medication, but I do think the big game changer was this class called B-cell depletion therapy (BCDT), and that includes Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) and Kesimpta (ofatumumab) and all the different variations that we’re excited about.

“Some people think of those as being like a heavy hitter, but we pretty much like to use that if all things being equal early on, because we do think that treating people with the most highly effective therapy being at the get-go gives the best long term outcomes.”

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Dr. Siccone continued, “But there are other therapies that also are anti-inflammatory and work to decrease new lesions from forming and decrease relapses, like oral therapies. And there are other sort of old, tried and true original medications, Copaxone, and the interferons, which are injectable therapies.

“We do offer all of those options to people. We do tend to steer people toward the higher efficacy, if there are risk factors that we think make it more likely that they have a higher risk of developing more severe disease.”

She explained that when patients have more spinal cord lesions—and particularly when they are older, male, or people of color—clinicians often give extra weight to those factors when deciding on the most appropriate treatment approach.

Questions To Ask Your Doctor

If you have a health screening coming up or have recently had one, you may have questions you want answered. SurvivorNet’s proprietary AI tool “My Health Questions” is designed specifically for patients and caregivers.

WATCH: How One Cancer Survivor and Her Sister Used “My Health Questions” to Navigate Care

This powerful resource is embedded across the SurvivorNet website and delivers structured responses grounded in clinical guidelines and medically reviewed research to help people better understand their treatment options and feel more confident navigating care.

My Health Questions can also help patients come up with useful questions ahead of their next appointment.

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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