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Raising awareness one step at a time

Greg Shwaga wants to raise money and awareness for Huntington’s disease, and he’s taking a long walk in order to do it. He going from border to border in Saskatchewan, and stopped by Yorkton This Week while he walked through the city.
Greg
Greg Shwaga, pictured with his support vehicle, stopped at Yorkton This Week to talk about his trip across the province, walking to raise funds and awareness for Huntington’s disease.

Greg Shwaga wants to raise money and awareness for Huntington’s disease, and he’s taking a long walk in order to do it. He going from border to border in Saskatchewan, and stopped by Yorkton This Week while he walked through the city. 

The trip began on July 10 on the border near Macklin, SK, and he has been walking ever since, with the goal of stopping at the Manitoba border near Lake of the Prairies. 

Huntington’s disease is an incurable genetic brain disorder, and Shwaga describes it as three diseases in one. It starts with a cognitive decline similar to dementia, progresses into a Parkinson’s-esque stage with rapid movement, before the final stage which is similar to ALS and leads to complete loss of muscle function and, eventually, death.

“If one of your parents has Huntington’s disease, as a child you have a 50/50 chance of inheriting it. It’s dominant inherited, if you inherit the gene you will get the disease, and it is fatal, there is no cure and there is no treatment for it.”

Shwaga was inspired to walk by his wife’s family after his mother-in-law died last April. She battled with the disease for around 20 years.

The problem right now is that there are no treatments, so people often do not get tested, even though there is a gene that indicates when the disease is present.

“I’ve been asked before, why should we care really? The statistics right now 1 in 7,000 Canadians has Huntington’s, 1 in 5,000 is at risk and 1 in 1,000 is affected in some way because of a family member or friend has Huntington’s. What I’ve also answered to that question is that we can test for those genes, we know who’s going to get it, we know how the disease progresses, it’s a sitting target, it’s fairly predictable. In many ways it seems like a disease we can cure sooner rather than later... Once you unlock Huntington’s, you may be able to make progress into Parkinson’s, ALS, Alzheimer’s and diseases like that as well, other brain disorders.”

The walk across the province came to Shwaga as it was something big that he could do. He’s a school principal, so he would have time in the summer to take up a big project, and a walk across the province would be something that would leave an impact.

There were two goals from the walk from the outset, raising money and raising awareness. Shwaga’s original goal was to raise $10,000, but he has surpassed it and is on track to raise around $18,000. Awareness-wise, he has had many people contact him to talk about their own connections to Huntington’s disease, whether they have it themselves or are connected to someone who does.

“It has raised the profile of Huntington’s disease for sure.”

Shwaga walks an average of 40 kms a day during the walk, and as someone who has ran on the highway before he knew what he was getting into.

“I know what damage the highway does to your feet. There are blisters, there sore joints and stuff like that. You work through that and put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.”

This is a homecoming for Shwaga, as he is originally from the Yorkton. He says that there plenty of familiar faces, but that the city has changed a lot in the 20 years since he left.

Shwaga’s main goal is to get people talking about Huntington’s and he hopes that whether or not people support his walk, they keep the Huntington’s Society of Canada in mind when they’re considering a cause to get behind. You can keep track of him at www.igslearn.com and visit the Huntington’s Society of Canada at www.huntingtonsociety.ca.