One day, standing in an eye doctor’s office, Dee Rasmussen stood staring at scans of his brain in disbelief.
Just days prior, Dee was living a normal life as a husband, father of three and powderman. On a seemingly normal night, he reached down to pick up his youngest daughter from her crib, who reached back up and poked his right eye. The next morning, he woke up without sight. “I thought it must have caused some internal bleeding, and it will clear up in a day or two,” he said.
After several days of not regaining his vision, he headed to an eye doctor who suggested he get an MRI. Moments after the scan, he stands looking at the images when the radiologist looks at him and says, “How long have you had MS?”
“I told him I don’t have MS, and he says, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ So I called the eye doctor, and he said, ‘Well, I suspected it,’” Dee said. “What had happened was the trauma from the finger poke caused my optic nerve to inflame, a symptom of MS, and that caused me to lose sight. He sent me to a neurologist who did some other testing, and then I got diagnosed.”
After his multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis in his mid-30s, Dee struggled with depression. “My father had died five years before, and I was just crushed from being diagnosed with a disease,” he said. Dee feared his fate would end with him in a wheelchair, or worse, and for the following eight years, the side effects of his medication left him practically bedridden.
At the same time, Dee was suffering from a back injury and the stress of switching careers. Spending long days at work and night school to become a rad tech, he neglected to take care of his physical and mental health, leading to a 30-pound weight gain. “My health was awful ‘cause of my ‘woe is me’ mindset,” Dee said. “I always just felt bad.”
Then in 2015, something changed. His sister, who was a personal trainer in Rigby at the time, asked him to join her and a group she put together to run a Tough Mudder, an obstacle course designed to test your strength and stamina. “I remember running around Rigby Lake, and I was winded,” he said. “I had a run/walk, so running around that once was a big deal.”
Both Dee’s physical and mental health had come a long way since his diagnosis. He went on to train for and complete three ultramarathons: two 40-mile loop runs in Bryce Canyon and one 50-mile run in Antelope Canyon in Arizona.
Then a few years after his fitness journey began, he found himself in a yoga class for the first time, where he found a solace in yoga that was unlike anything else and, moreover, a community of supportive people.
On an early morning run around the Green Belt, Dee’s hip flexors were in so much pain that he desperately wanted to find relief, and when he drove past the Yoga Co-Op, he stopped in. “I swung in that morning, and it was right when class was starting, and she didn't have anybody show up to class,” he said. “She said, ‘Come on in.’ Didn't charge me anything. She led me through a yoga session, and I've been going since then.”
This one small gesture made a huge impact on his life, and he now practices yoga three to four days a week. “I look forward to coming 'cause I always feel better afterwards,” he said.
Despite the ups and downs since his diagnosis, Dee has remained kind-hearted and become an inspiration to so many around him.
“Dee is doing incredible things. The turnaround since his diagnosis and moving through depression and the turnaround in yoga. He’s the guy doing all the inversions and arm balances,” Nicole Packer, owner of Yoga Wellness Connection, said. “He’s very physically strong, and not that that's what matters, but just where his physical body has arrived, I think is such a powerful message. We don't need to be defined by any kind of diagnosis, mental, physical, or any label.”