I first met Letisha Malcolm four years ago on a missions project here in Baltimore. What I didn’t know was that she had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
“I began having walking difficulties and I thought it was just nerve damage or because I was working a lot with churches and in communities to help bring food,” she says. “I was just thinking that I was walking too much.”
Letisha is a Fulbright scholar and works with the U.N., UNESCO, and others. She also teaches social studies and history in D.C. public schools.
“It has been extremely difficult,” she says. “There’s been times I’ve been at work and my coworkers had to come and get me, had to even help me walk up the stairs.”
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system. It causes lesions to grow on her brain. They affect her ability to walk, and she can’t drive anymore.
Somehow, though, she manages to balance her passion projects and teaching, while battling this dreaded disease.
“It was also my arms and my hands,” she shows us. “So, I would have temporary paralysis where there’ll be times where my hands are just like this, and my feet would also be at a curvature and unable to move.”
Now, multiple sclerosis is attacking her spine and heart. Her doctor says there’s nothing further he can do.
Most recently, Letisha spent about two months in the hospital, getting out just in time to walk across the stage at Morgan State University’s fall commencement. Earning her second doctoral degree from there.
On Christmas Eve, Letisha had surgery for coronary spasms. And still, another glimmer of hope. She’s been referred to Johns Hopkins in hopes the researchers there can slow the progression of the disease.
“I’m experiencing things that some people who have had M.S. for about 10 to 15 years they have not experienced, and my brain has deteriorated significantly,” she says. “So I often say that, you know, it’s nothing but the grace of God that I’m still alive.”
