Hope for a cure

Hope Corona had warning signs in the past, but didn’t know what they added up to. The symptoms were unlike any other she had experienced before: a foot that felt frozen like ice cubes but was warm to the touch, and a chin that felt like a doctor had applied Novocain.
   
Some thought she was crazy.
  
But when she awakened one morning in 1999 to numbness on the entire right side of her body, Corona, who was 33 at the time, knew there was much more to it. “Everyone thought I had a stroke,” she said. But she could move all of her extremities.
   
The mother of three from East Meadow was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “The doctor was like, ‘Oh, you have MS,’” Corona said, “as if it was no big deal.”
   
Scared, yet clueless about her condition, Corona suffered from panic attacks. Then, one day, her legs went out from under her. She was hospitalized.
   
Eventually she discovered the National MS Society. After three hours of questions and answers with a helpful person on the other end of the phone, Corona had much more information than her physician could provide, and felt a sense of relief.
   
These days, more than a decade after her diagnosis, Corona is paying back the MS Society and its mission to find a cure for the disease, which affects millions of Americans. With the assistance of family and close friends, she coordinated the inaugural Taste of the Town on Monday, a fundraising evening of food and wine tasting at Carlyle on the Green in Bethpage State Park.
   
Restaurants, bakeries, wineries and other businesses from across Long Island offered their delicacies to an estimated 200 guests. There was also a raffle, live music and a silent auction.
   
Corona’s close friends, Pat Schneider and Rose Fuger, along with fellow MS patients Pam Hill and David Kaplan, helped her plan the event. Schneider, who became friends with Corona about 13 years ago, when their children were in Calvary Lutheran Church’s Mommy and Me program, noted that Corona’s persistence and hard work reflect her character.