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Leaving her mark
Battling ALS, Dr. Faye Magneson maintains her spirit while painting, raising funds


JIM MEENAN
Tribune Staff Writer

With the black pastel pressed between her thumb and index finger, Dr. Faye Magneson gently painted a narrow tree with short, quick strokes.

Her smile is full of life as her idea is transported from her mind through her fingers to the page.

The physician has trouble walking. She can't talk, and she has some difficulty breathing. But the pleasant smile across her face is true to her core.


Faye Magneson, of Granger, continues to live life as best she can.

Now well into her fourth year with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Faye wrote, "God could not have created a worse disease."

But at this moment at Studio Arts Center in South Bend, one would have to watch closely to see that she's the one battling ALS in the class of six or so students.

The look in her eyes is as bright as a yellow pastel, her face full of expression.

"It's a new focus," Faye wrote on white note pad during a break in painting. "I love sports, skiing, tennis, golf, but I had to find a different avenue as I had to let all that go."

Invited by her yoga instructor to take the pastel class, she approached her friend Elsie Nemeth about joining her. They both joked they could only draw stick figures when they started.

That was in September 2005.

"We do it for fun and enjoyment," said Nemeth at a recent Friday class. "We took the attitude, let's try it."

And it's working.

"We work strictly in landscapes," art teacher Catherine McCormick said. "She always chooses a subject matter that's pretty challenging."

But Nemeth notes that is Faye.

"Faye, she just meets challenges head on," Nemeth said.

Nemeth's longtime doctor and friend came to her aid two years ago when she lost her husband. She helped her get a dog, got her involved with some sporting activities, helped her with her new life.

She just reaches out and touches your life, Nemeth said. "She's been a blessing for me.

"She helps you realize where you are and brings it out of you."

So it is with the pastels. The challenge is her own this time.

She perseveres, Nemeth said, "and does it with a positive attitude and enthusiasm.

"You challenge yourself, and your abilities come out," Nemeth added. "We come here. We smile. We joke. We laugh."

But coping with ALS is full of uncertainty.

"The disease progresses, and you never know what will be affected next," Faye wrote in an earlier interview conducted by e-mail.

"To have to give up my career, to have to write whatever I want to say, to not be able to take a walk with my family, all are major aspects that have changed my life and forced me to look at other things that I could pursue."

But Faye has found she can continue to grow. The accomplished doctor and teacher, who could get only a C in high school art, is doing good work, McCormick said.

"Drawing was something foreign to me and way out of my comfort zone," Faye said, "but I said, 'why not?' And I have loved it ever since."

Magneson was on hand for a May 21 luncheon by Friends for Faye, a group that is on the verge of having raised $1 million locally for ALS research.

"She was great," Jody Freid, Faye's friend and the event organizer, said. Many people stopped by to tell stories of how she helped them as a doctor, Freid said, and she conversed, writing notes. At the end, Freid said, "she was able to give hugs" to people as they left.

"The South Bend community has been outstanding in support of finding a cure for ALS," Faye said. "The more individuals hear about ALS and the devastating effects it has on a person, the more they realize that treatment and a cure must be found.

"To be totally paralyzed and have total mental capacity is hard to even imagine, and this is exactly how ALS is."

It's not easy, but Faye still gets around.

She has traveled to Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and Italy over the past two years.

She recently returned from her daughter's graduation from Georgetown University.

And she has continued to serve as the director of the first- and second-year medicine course at Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend, winning Teacher of the Year for 2007, enjoying greatly the interaction with faculty and students.

She has taken up bridge, calling it stimulating and enjoyable. She has even tried knitting. And she is part of a book club and Bible study "with wonderful and supportive friends."

Life may not be all that it used to be, "but I have had to find enjoyment in other things, which I would never have thought about in the past," she wrote.

And not working "has given me time to spend with my family and friends, which is time that I truly cherish."

She continued to paint on a recent Friday morning at Studio Arts Center.

Amid all of life's gifts to her family, these paintings could be the best, McCormick said, adding, "They will treasure these paintings for generations."

Faye has helped raise more than $1 million for ALS. She's helped save people's lives. She is a wife, mother, educator.

But it's that spirit that still results in a smile that may be her most important legacy.

"I have a strong faith, wonderful and supportive family and friends, and the realization that this is the only life I have," she wrote, "so I better try and live each day to the best I can."

Thee is also a cookbook called Faye-vorites
a collection
of
Dr. Faye Magneson's
favorite recipes

The proceeds go to ALS TDF . You might be able to find it by visiting

www.als.net

She has a great recipe for Banana Bread! *grin

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********************

By JIM MEENAN
South Bend Tribune
11:13 p.m. EDT, May 28, 2012

She's beaten the odds ... but not the disease.

Dr. Faye Magneson has been battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for
Related
Still time to enter

Dr. Faye Magneson addresses her Indiana University School of Medicine students during a meeting at Memorial Hospital on Jan. 10, 2005.
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almost nine years.

Most patients live only two to five years with ALS.

Magneson was an internal medicine doctor and director of curriculum at
Indiana University School of Medicine in South Bend when she found out
the twitches and cramps in her legs weren’t from playing too much
tennis.

She was about to turn 50 when she learned she had the diagnosis she
feared most –– ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease.

She lost her voice in 2006 and was in a wheelchair a year later. These
days little movement is left.

In her book, “An Art Journey,” featuring pastels she painted for five
years after taking up the hobby in 2006, Magneson credits many, but
particularly her husband, with keeping her going.

“The care I’ve received from physicians, caregivers, but particularly,
my husband, has been key,” she explained for a recent e-mail interview
with The Tribune.

“It is a brutal disease, and the care is brutal on the spouse left
taking care of the person with ALS.

“I have had some close calls with death, but the knowledge my husband
has and quick action has given me more time.”

‘An amazing woman’

Dr. Tom Seiffert, her husband of nearly 33 years, says he could not
imagine doing it for any other person.

“She’s an amazing woman,” he said. “She’s the best thing that ever
happened to me.”

And she’s got a unique inner core.

“She’s a tough lady,” Seiffert said. “She is. And her friends and her
interacting and taking care of people is really big for her.”

Those people are key for her, Magneson said.

“Having a strong support system with devoted friends and family keeps
me positive and forces me to keep going,” she wrote. “My prior
patients continue to be a part of my life, which offers so much.”

None of that support, including daily phone calls from the couple’s
two daughters out east, is an accident, Seiffert said.

“It’s been great. The community’s amazing,” he said. “A lot of them
are the same people. A lot of them are her patients, her friends,
friends of her patients who have come back because they were well
taken care of by her.”

Compassionate

Magneson was not your typical physician, he said. The woman who
struggles for even the smallest movement now always went the extra
mile for her patients.

“Faye did a lot of things that a lot of physicians don’t feel that
they have time for,” Seiffert said.

“She would go to the nursing homes, she would go to the funeral
parlors when the patients would die and visit with the family.”

These days, Seiffert is still a full-time physician with Radiology
Inc. at Memorial Hospital and sometimes in Elkhart and Goshen.

He credits a team effort with his wife’s survival in their Granger
home. But he’s also realistic, having lived with the harsh reality of
ALS.

“She’s had excellent care,” he said. “We take good care of her. She’s
got a spirit. She’s tried many more things. For every individual, it’s
a difficult decision on how far you want to go.

“Some people,” Magneson’s husband noted, “won’t have the resources and
maybe they’ll make that decision (not to fight it any longer). Some
people’s diseases progress faster than others.”

Magneson said the disease has been a mystery to the research community
for decades.

“I know there are many facets to the disease, but I feel the main
reason is biogenetics,” she wrote of her longevity with it. “Some
present with a rapid progression; others with a slower presentation.”

Her typical day includes help from her caregivers to shower and get
started, with visits from friends later in the morning. Some often
come back and help Tom with her care later on.

The couple enjoys watching TV shows like “NCIS” and Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

She can’t paint any more.

Still communicating

These days, she’s lost almost all movement. And yet, she fights on.

She can still use her little finger and the upper extremity of her
hand, Seiffert said. Though she’s been on a ventilator for the past
year, she still participates in life, even communicating with her
eyes, said Amy Whipple, Midwest Regional director for the ALS Therapy
Development Institute.

“Her eyes tell a story,” said Whipple, who met Magneson more than
eight years ago in Boston, when she toured ALS TDI’s lab, which these
days is on the verge of a trial drug that could slow down the disease.

“And her smile tells a story,” Whipple added. “And without her even
being able to communicate, you can get a vibe from her. That warmth
and love and interest, even though she’s a bit of a bystander in terms
of communication, that keeps people around.”

That smile, clearly her trademark based on pictures from long ago, is
unusual for her condition.

“She can smile, which is sometimes unusual for ALS patients,” Whipple
said. “Her eyes are very vibrant and full of life. And her smile is
full of life.”

Perhaps it’s the inspiration behind her 8-year-old foundation, Friends
for Faye, which has raised more than $1.5 million since 2004.

The foundation already hosted a luncheon in May. Still to come are a
tennis tournament Friday at Knollwood Country Club and golf outing
June 18 at South Bend Country Club.

“Faye has a lot she wants to accomplish in life,” Whipple said. “It’s
evident she’s doing that with the art book she created, and continuing
to be a driving force for her fundraising events and she’s got a lot
of living still to do.”

Eventually her ability to communicate, even via computers at home with
the aid of her eyes, will cease. And then, Seiffert said, then she
will have another decision to make.

“Because taking care of somebody you can’t tell needs something or is
in pain, is not an ideal situation,” he said.

But the teacher in Magneson still remains.

She held on to her IU post as long as she could, retiring in 2010.
There, according to her book, she relished teaching medical students
in the techniques of interviewing patients, physical examination and
professionalism.

If she could instruct for one more day, Magneson wrote, this is what
she would say:

“Live in the present. The past is history, and the future is not
promised to us.”

And in typical Magneson fashion, she closed the e-mail with these words:

“Thanks,

Faye.”

Staff writer Jim Meenan:
jmeenan@sbtinfo.com
574-235-6342
Copyright © 2012, South Bend Tribune