Amy Dotson chooses to see the silver linings.
An Air Force veteran who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2014, Dotson found a supportive community and leads a life of relative independence due in large part to the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA).
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimates that between 55,000-70,000 veterans live with multiple sclerosis in the United States. March is MS awareness month, and PVA turns 80 this year.
“My MS diagnosis has opened up a lot of opportunities I never had before,” said Dotson explaining the silver lining.
It took about eight years from the initial symptoms until Dotson was diagnosed.
“Multiple sclerosis is an unpredictable disease of the central nervous system. The central nervous system includes the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. This system controls everything we do. MS disrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and the rest of the body,” according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society website.
Dotson experienced some numbness and tingling on the left side of her face in 2006. A trip to the ER ruled out a stroke. Doctors told her to come back if it happened again. It did.
Over the years, she had different symptoms, but no one linked them together until in 2014 when she fractured her hand in a fall after having vertigo. A doctor dove into her medical records and started looking for the source of her vertigo.
An MRI revealed some lesions on her brain and a spinal tap confirmed the diagnosis. That brought some relief to her.
“I finally had a name for what’s going on,” she said. “For years I heard I was making up my symptoms or that it was all in my head. It was all in my head. I had images to prove it.”
Dotson, who served as a cryptological language analyst, before she medically retired, got in adaptive sports a couple of years after her diagnosis. She competed in the recumbent cycling event in the 2016 DoD Warrior Games and in wheelchair racing in the 2017 Invictus Games.
But as the disease progressed, Dotson became more limited.
“There was a period of time that I felt I was just existing,” she said. “I was no longer able to drive. I didn’t have an accessible vehicle.”
She had to rely on others to make doctors’ appointments. While food delivery provides a great service, she just wanted to be able to pick out her own produce.
“All my life I’d been the helper. It was frustrating for me. I felt relationships were lopsided,” she said.
And she didn’t know how to ask for the help she needed.
She’d heard of the PVA, but she had no idea she’d need the organization. Before her diagnosis, she even volunteered for a bass fishing tournament the group sponsored.
“Paralyzed Veterans of America has become that sense of community,” she said. “It has a rich history. It started in 1946 and it’s the only veterans’ service organization that’s dedicated to veterans with spinal cord injuries and disease like MS and ALS. To me, that was important.”
In 2024, she said she got her life back because of someone with the PVA who looked into her records and found everything in them that she needed to get an accessible vehicle.
“I’ve been able to volunteer again. I’ve been able to advocate for other people in similar circumstances. Paralyzed Veterans of America has given me the opportunity to get back into adaptive sports which is incredibly fulfilling for me. I’ve been able to visit people in hospitals. I been able to go to Capitol Hill to meet with legislators to bring up issues that are so important to us such as improving our facilities, having more staff especially nurses; having better resources not only for our spinal cord/MS/ALS patients but for everybody who uses the facilities,” she said.
Dotson receives her medical care at the VA Hospital spinal cord unit in Augusta and at the VA in Atlanta, and the providers there do a great job, she said.
She’s passionate about protecting the units that provide specialized care at the VA such as the spinal cord unit and urges people to sign a petition at https://pva.org/get-involved/power-of-pva/. She’s also appears in PSA for the organization.
With her involvement in adaptive sports, she traveled to the winter adaptive sports clinic in 2025 and participated in the Valor games in May 2025.
She’s involved in wheelchair curling, pickleball and boccia ball which is a precision Paralympic target sport for wheelchair athletes. She’s got a regional boccia event coming up in April.
The different adaptive sports have made more of an impact on her life than regular sports did as she was growing up.
“I did try several sports, but I never found any that grabbed me like adaptive sports do,” she said.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s won multiple Georgia Press Association awards, is the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award and was named Augusta Magazine’s best local writer in 2024 and 2025. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
