Music Professor With MS Featured In PBS Documentary About the Disease

The American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) recently aired a documentary about a University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) music professor, who suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), on OETA. “Healed: Music, Medicine and Life with MS,” tells the story of Jim Klages‘s struggle against the disease.

Klages was an accomplished musician and cornet soloist in the United States Marine Band, when he woke up feeling an unusual, unshakeable tingling in his left arm. It was the first symptoms of disease that affects the brain and spinal cord, which was later diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis. He was at the height of his career, had just performed at former President George H.W. Bush’s inauguration in 1989, and had a happy marriage. However, everything changed with the diagnosis.

He faced not only a chronic disease, but also a series of tribulations. Klages’s career ended, his marriage was stressed to the breaking point and he lost his home and financial security as his health deteriorated. This is the story not only of the disease, but mainly of his life, struggle, and the way in which returning to the music was an alternatively treatment.

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