A UPS driver diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) was abandoned by his wife. His response? Walk 20,000 steps daily, fight for his son, and prove MS isn’t the end. His story will make you rethink everything you thought about illness and love.

The Diagnosis

An Encounter at the Loading Dock

The UPS facility in Montgomery, Alabama, smells like cardboard and ambition. That’s not a romanticization—it’s just what it smells like. Conveyor belts humming, scanners beeping, the particular rhythm of packages finding their way to destinations they’ve never seen. I’ve been standing here for forty minutes, watching the package car drivers load their trucks before dawn, because sometimes the best stories happen where you least expect them.

I’m waiting for a man named David. I can’t tell you his last name because he asked me not to, and the deal we made was this: I’d write about the conversation, but I’d protect the details that matter to him. What I can tell you is that he works here. That he’s been a package car driver for eleven years. That he walks roughly twenty thousand steps a day, lifting thousands of pounds, with a disease that most people assume would leave him bedridden.

I found David because I was looking for someone who could tell me what it’s like to be abandoned because of illness. Not theoretically. Not in the abstract way we talk about “support systems” and “community.” Really abandoned. Thrown away like you were never part of anything at all.

What I found was something I wasn’t prepared for.

He’s shorter than I expected. Package car drivers tend to have that compact, functional build—designed by years of loading and unloading, of lifting and climbing, of navigating tight spaces with heavy objects. His hands are large, the kind of hands that have gripped thousands of packages and never once dropped one. His grip is firm when we shake, and I notice he doesn’t let go immediately. That’s a tell, I’ve learned. The people who hold on a moment too long are the ones who’ve learned what it means to be let go.

“You wrote that you wanted to talk to someone who knows what it’s like,” he says. His voice is steady but warm, with the particular cadence of someone who spent years talking to customers through screen doors and now talks to his son through phone screens. “So let’s talk.”

We walk toward the parking lot. The morning is still dark, the kind of Alabama pre-dawn that feels like the world hasn’t decided yet whether to be hot or cold. David wears a short-sleeve uniform shirt despite the chill. I ask if he’s cold.

“MS,” he says. “Temperature intolerance. I run hot. Always now. Even in winter.” He pauses. “That’s the thing people don’t understand. It’s not just the lesions. It’s everything else that comes with them. Every system you didn’t know you had is suddenly a system you have to manage.”

We sit on a bench near his truck. The parking lot is mostly empty—most drivers have already left, their routes beginning before most people wake up. David’s route starts at seven. It’s five-thirty. He has time.

“Tell me about the diagnosis,” I say.

He looks at his hands. His large, package-handling, son-hugging, steering-wheel-gripping hands.

“August third, twenty-twenty-four,” he says. “One of the best days of my life. Family vacation. My wife, my nine-year-old. We took this picture—I still have it on my phone. Everyone’s laughing. My son is making a face, you know, that face kids make when they think they’re being funny. My wife is leaning into me. Perfect. Just perfect.”

He stops. Clears his throat.

“Nine days later, my life started to crumble. I went in for an MRI because of a crick in my neck. I thought I’d strained something. The MRI showed lesions. Multiple lesions, from C1 to C7 on my spinal cord. A thirteen-millimeter lesion at C1. Before the brain MRI, before we even knew for certain, my wife and I already knew what was coming. Multiple Sclerosis. We just didn’t know how soon the coming would be.”

The sun is starting to rise now, casting long shadows across the parking lot. A security guard drives by in a golf cart, waves at David. David waves back. These small rituals of normalcy, I realize, are probably the things that keep him going.

“Did you read about Montel Williams?” he asks.

I nod. I know where this is going.

“He got divorced around the time he was diagnosed. I remember reading that and thinking—aloud, to my wife—how devastating that must have been. To be diagnosed and then abandoned. Like the disease wasn’t enough. Like the universe needed to take everything else too.”

David laughs. It’s not a bitter laugh, exactly. It’s the laugh of someone who has processed something so fully that they can now look at it with something like wonder.

“That became my reality,” he says. “The nightmare. My marriage was a wonderful dream until I showed signs of MS. Then it became something else entirely.”

He tells me about the laundry. About how his clothes started being treated like they were contaminated. About how the washer and dryer became territories, his things separated from the family’s things, thrown onto his bed one night like they were dirty. They’re not. They’re not dirty. But when you’re facing a life-changing diagnosis, moments like that cut deep.

“I put a wrinkled T-shirt in the dryer one night,” he says. “Just to fluff it. She pulled it out and threw it on the floor. These sound like small things. I know they sound small. But when you’re already scared, already wondering what your future looks like, and the person who promised to be your partner treats your clothes like they’re contaminated—” He stops. “It makes you feel like you’re the contamination. Like you’re the problem.”

I think about how people with AIDS were treated in the 1980s. The fear, the stigma, the way illness became moral failing. David mentions this himself. He says MS was framed as his problem, not their problem. As if he’d chosen it. As if it was something he could have prevented.

“The thing about invisible illness,” he says, “is that people can’t see it, so they start to wonder if it’s real. Or worse—they think it’s real, but they think you’re exaggerating. They think you’re using it for attention. They think you’re weaker than you should be.”

He lifts his arm, shows me the muscle definition in his forearm. “Twenty thousand steps a day. Thousands of pounds lifted. Every single day. I’m not weak. I never was. But the disease doesn’t care. And apparently, neither did my marriage.”

Christmas Eve. He says these two words like they’re a wound that will never fully heal. Christmas Eve, his wife told him a divorce had been filed. Christmas Eve, he learned that the money saved for Disney World—the trip that was supposed to be their son’s major Christmas present—would go to an attorney instead. Christmas Eve, he learned that the person who had promised to stand by him “in sickness and in health” had decided that sickness was optional.

“Six days later, December thirtieth, I got the official diagnosis,” he says. “Incurable. Progressive. I got both realities at once. The end of my marriage and the confirmation of an incurable disease. In the same week. In the same moment, really.”

He says the word “incurable” without flinching. I notice this. I notice how his voice doesn’t waver, how his hands stay still. This is a man who has processed the worst news a person can receive and come out the other side still standing. Not unscathed. Not unchanged. But standing.

“The divorce papers included her request for exclusive rights to the marital residence,” he says. “The house that’s handicapped accessible. The house we bought because the previous owner needed those features. That house. She wanted it. Which meant I had to move out. Into my other place.”

He pauses. “That place had no heat. No hot water. December. Middle of winter. In Alabama, people don’t always think about how cold it can get, how damp, how the walls feel like they’re closing in. But when you have MS, and temperature intolerance is part of your disease—” He stops. “When you’re supposed to avoid getting too hot or too cold, and your only option is a house that can’t keep you warm—” He stops again. “I made it work. I had to. Because that’s what you do. You make it work.”

A truck starts up nearby. The sound breaks something in the silence. David shifts on the bench, stretches his legs.

“You have a son,” I say.

“Nine years old,” he says. “Best kid in the world. I’m not just saying that. I’m the most involved person in his life. I do carpool every day. I handle homework. I’m the manager of his baseball team. I chaperone field trips. I show up. Always. Every single time.”

His voice catches. Just for a moment. Just enough for me to notice.

“MS has been used to limit my relationship with him,” he says. “The only offer presented to me and my attorney would allow me to see him just six days per month. Six days. Out of thirty. For a kid whose entire life I’ve been present in.”

He’s spent fifty-five thousand dollars in legal fees. Fifty-five thousand dollars just to continue to be a major part of his son’s life. Just to fight for the right to be a father when someone decided he shouldn’t be.

“You know what the worst part is?” he asks. “The worst part isn’t the money. The worst part isn’t even the six days. The worst part is looking at my son and wondering if he understands. If he knows that I’m fighting. That I’d move heaven and earth for him. That this disease doesn’t define me, and neither does this divorce, and neither does any court order that tries to keep me away.”

I ask him about the good parts. Because there have to be good parts. There always are, even in the worst stories. Especially in the worst stories, maybe.

His face changes. The heaviness lifts, just slightly, replaced by something that looks almost like wonder.

“I have an outstanding neurologist,” he says. “Dr. Chris Laganke in Cullman. MS specialist. I feel like he’s the best there was, the best there is, and the best there ever will be. That’s not hyperbole. That’s just how I feel about him. He listens. He cares. When I tell him something, he actually hears it.”

He’s on Ocrevus and Ampyra. His treatment is working. His MRI in October of this year showed no new lesions compared to November of last year. No new lesions. That’s the sentence he says with the most weight. That’s the victory. That’s the proof that all of this—the medications, the monitoring, the careful management of a body that has declared war on itself—it’s working.

“I work as a UPS Package Car Driver,” he says. And then he tells me the numbers. Twenty thousand steps a day. Thousands of pounds lifted. Every day. With this disease. With lesions on his spinal cord. With a body that sometimes doesn’t do what he tells it to.

“People hear MS and they think wheelchair,” he says. “They think disability. They think giving up. But I walk twenty thousand steps a day. I lift thousands of pounds a day. I deliver packages to people who have no idea that the guy bringing them their stuff has an incurable disease. And I’m proof—actual, physical proof—that MS doesn’t automatically mean giving up your purpose.”

“UPS has treated me with compassion,” he says. “Flexibility. Some of the best health insurance in the country. They didn’t have to do any of that. But they did. And I won’t forget it. Not ever.”

He talks about his friends. About his family. About the people who showed up when he needed them most. The people who didn’t run when they heard the diagnosis. The people who treated him like a person, not a liability.

“I always knew my family was the best,” he says. “I never took my friends for granted—but I didn’t fully understand how incredible they were until my MS diagnosis and being abandoned because of it. That’s the thing about crisis. It shows you who people really are. And some people—they become heroes. They step up in ways you never expected. And some people—” He pauses. “Some people show you who they were all along. And you just didn’t want to see it.”

The sun is fully up now. The parking lot is starting to fill with other drivers, other stories, other people carrying their own invisible weights. David stands up. He has to. His route starts soon. The packages aren’t going to deliver themselves.

“I have a goal,” he says. “I want to be the first man with MS to live to be one hundred years old. And if someone beats me to it—if some other MS patient outlasts me—I want to be there to throw them the biggest birthday party imaginable.”

He’s smiling when he says this. Not the smile of someone who’s been through hell. The smile of someone who has walked through hell, come out the other side, and decided that the best revenge is longevity. Joy. Refusal to quit.

“My reason for posting this was simple,” he says. “If someone in Montgomery—or anywhere—receives an MS diagnosis and feels scared, abandoned, or overwhelmed, I want them to know they are not alone.”

He lists the things he offers. Someone to talk to. Encouragement. Lunch, his treat. Someone to show them what resilience looks like in real life. Someone who has been through pure hell and is still standing.

“I didn’t post this for sympathy,” he says. “I posted it because many people with MS experience isolation, fear, and dehumanization on top of the disease itself. And that part often goes unspoken. Someone needs to speak it. Someone needs to say: I see you. I’ve been there. You’re not alone.”

He looks at me. His eyes are brown, tired, but not defeated. Never defeated.

“My story isn’t a sob story,” he says. “It’s a story about endurance, faith, resiliency, perseverance, and just flat out refusing to quit. This movie might have started like Misery or The War of the Roses, but it’s going to end up like Rudy or Rocky. You know, honestly? My story would make one hell of a movie.”

The route awaits. The packages await. A nine-year-old son awaits, probably sleeping now, probably dreaming of the father who fights every single day to be in his life.

David turns to go. Then he stops.

“You know what I think about?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“I think about the people who are going to read this. The ones who’ve just been diagnosed. The ones who are sitting in their cars right now, in parking lots like this one, wondering what their lives are going to look like. Wondering if they’re going to be abandoned. Wondering if they can do this. Wondering if it’s worth trying.”

He steps closer. The morning light catches his face, and I see something there I didn’t see before. Not just resilience. Not just endurance. Something gentler. Something fiercer.

“I want them to know something,” he says. “I want you to tell them something.”

“Tell me.”

Before You Go

He said something to me that I think you need to hear. Something that isn’t about MS, specifically. Something that applies to anyone who has ever been abandoned, dismissed, or made to feel like less than human because of something they couldn’t control.

“The people who leave when you’re sick were never really there in the first place.”

Say that again. Let it land.

“The people who leave when you’re sick were never really there in the first place.”

I know. I know it sounds like a cliché. I know you’ve heard it before. But David said it differently. He said it like someone who has examined every moment of his abandonment, every discarded piece of laundry, every cold night in a house without heat, and emerged with this truth. Not a consolation prize. Not a silver lining. A truth.

Because here’s what I learned from sitting with David at five-thirty in the morning, watching the sun rise over a UPS parking lot in Montgomery, Alabama: The people who stay don’t have to be heroes. They don’t have to be perfect. They just have to stay. And the people who leave—their leaving tells you everything you need to know about who they were, not who you are.

Your Invitation

David made me promise to include this.

If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and feels scared, abandoned, or overwhelmed—he wants to hear from you. Not because he has all the answers. Not because his story has a perfect ending. But because he knows what it’s like to be sitting in that parking lot, wondering if you can do this, wondering if it’s worth trying.

If you need someone to talk to, he’s here.
If you need encouragement, he’s here.
If you need to go to lunch with someone because you need your concerns aired, his treat.
If you need to see what resilience looks like in real life, he’s here.

He’s been through pure hell. And he’s still standing.

He’s in Montgomery, Alabama. But distance doesn’t matter. These conversations can happen anywhere. Over the phone. Over text. Over the distance that illness creates between us and the people we thought would never leave.

Reach out. Even if you’re scared. Even if you don’t know what to say. Even if you feel like you’re burdening someone. Reach out anyway.

Because David is right: The heaviest thing isn’t being rejected. The worst thing isn’t the disease. The worst thing is spending years thinking you’re alone when you’re not. When there are people like David, waiting in parking lots at five-thirty in the morning, ready to tell you the truth:

You’re not alone. And you never have to be.

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The sun is up now. David’s truck is pulling out of the parking lot, loaded with packages, headed for destinations he delivers to every day. He’s walking twenty thousand steps today. Lifting thousands of pounds. Proving, with every step, that this disease doesn’t define him. That the abandonment didn’t destroy him. That the father still fights for his son, every single day, with everything he has.

And somewhere out there, someone is sitting in a parking lot, scared and alone, wondering if they can do this.

David wants you to know: You can. And you don’t have to do it alone.

He’s here. He’s still standing. And so can you.