Sheri Paulson, 43, has MS, but people still tell her that she looks great – even if she doesn’t feel great at all.  However, Sheri understands that people have troubles understanding what she’s going trough “it is difficult for them to understand that I have a disability or could be in this much pain,” She said.

Sheri, is a wife and mother from Galesburg, N.D, and she does all she can to fight the disease, and she’s deeply involved in helping to find a cure, raising funds for the MS Society through bike-a-thons. She’s been doing that since 2008. However, a new chapter of her MS life is now written, a chapter that begins with atypical trigeminal neuralgia, a neurological condition due to her MS, condition which creates great pain in her face.

Sheri was for seven months challenged “physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually, with moments of complete despair, unable to find relief for the pain”, she said. “My love for my family and friends, faith in God, zest for life and never-give-up attitude carried me through some difficult days.”

Even if Sheri had surgery last December in Seattle, this only helped her partially, as she still feels like her mouth is in a vice grip, and, as she says she gets “many electrical shooting shocks to my mouth and jaw that only last for a second but completely stop me in my tracks; sometimes 25 to 30 a day.”

She’s better, but she lives with “with a lot of pain and fatigue; I am on quite a few medications, and I require a lot of rest. However, I am determined to continue to do the things I still can and find joy in each day.”

Sheri now spends her time raising funds, as she had to quit her job at Bank of the West Fargo, due to fatigue and blurred vision which doesn’t allow her to do anything for any length of time.

Even if she’s far from feeling good, she still pedals her bike, and she participated in a local MS ride for fund raising – she was not able to finish the race, but she still managed to ride over 100 miles.

Sheri was also the captain for country artist Clay Walker Team Band Against MS, at a ride in Proctor, Minn., and she managed to raise $16,000 for MS.

Her goal is to ride her bike in all 50 states. “This may now mostly be talking,” she says, “but talking is something I can still do very well.”

For her, exercising is really important, and even if she can’t do it the way she used to, she still enjoys running, biking and walking her dog. She says that her strength comes from her family, friends and faith, and she also stated: “I believe a positive attitude can take us a long way. I refuse to concentrate on the negatives or the ‘cant’s,’ but rather the ‘cans’; what I still can do.”