For two years, Sarah Mishou had a goal in mind: to run from Houston to Austin, all to raise money and awareness for a disease that affects her personally.
Mishou, a 37-year-old wife and mother, was diagnosed with small fiber neuropathy in 2013 after years of living in pain, years of tests and doctors poking and prodding that returned nothing.
So Dec. 27, Mishou began her run on the outskirts of Katy to the Texas Capitol, feeling as prepared as she ever to make the 100-mile journey. Her plan: to run 10 miles a day for 10 days. Not only would she be running through the pain, but doing so six weeks pregnant.
“For some reason I had this strong belief I can do it,” Mishou said, whose doctor cleared her before her run. “I just trained for 21 days to get my body to the point where I’m in good condition, and I felt like if I started then I would have the power to make it through.”
Mishou said she often wakes up with stabbing and burning pains, as well as tingling sensations. There are days, she said, when her index finger is burning and her middle finger, on the same hand, is freezing. Sometimes, she said, she can’t lift her left arm above her shoulder or hold a glass of water. One day, she recalled, she couldn’t walk.
“It’s just like you never know how you’re going to wake up,” Mishou said. “At some point, I was convinced that someone had a voodoo doll and was doing a bunch of things to my body.
“You get to a point where dying feels more appealing than trying to stay alive.”
Small fiber neuropathy is a condition that affects a person’s small nerves throughout their body, often leading to the slightest touch can cause an immense amount of pain. Dr. Paul Schulz, a neurologist with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and Memorial Hermann Mischer Neuroscience Institute-Texas Medical Center, likened the pain to getting burned, but rather than the pain going away, it’s constant for someone with the disease.
“It has a lot of downstream affects to their daily lives,” Schulz said.
Doctors have found that small fiber neuropathy can be treated by with anti-seizure medications, anti-depressants or opioids, but there’s no current cure, Schulz said.
Mishou is raising money for small fiber neuropathy. She plans to donate all money raised to the UT Health Science Center at Houston to create a fund research and to help others with the disease.
Mishou ran 11 miles her first day and said she had a great outlook for the rest of her run. But the ensuing days proved difficult.
Some days she could only muster seven miles, like on day four when the pain in her knee forced her to stop. Some days she ran 12 miles, like her eighth day when she had to play catch-up through the hills of Bastrop State Park in order to reach her goal.
“That one made me want to quit,” Mishou said. “It is just hill after hill after hill after hill.”
There were days where she was chased by farm dogs. She had to complete one run at night. During the end, the temperature was so cold she swore she was going to get frostbite.
Every day after her run, she returned to her Sugar Land home to cook, clean and care for her 22-month-old son while her husband worked. She squeezed in Epsom Salt baths and stretched when she could. Her days started at 6 a.m. with getting her son ready for day care, then her husband drove her back to her stopping point to begin the next day’s run.
At times the pain was unbearable, she said, but no matter how bad she felt or how terrible a run was, she kept pushing through to Austin. She built a following on Facebook, which served as a de facto race journal that allowed her to check in with her followers who cheered her on.
When she reached the top of the steps outside the Capitol on Jan. 1, which doubled as her 37th birthday, tears filled her eyes.
She stood for a moment before kneeling to touch the ground.
“I wanted to make sure it was reality,” she said.
