In 1992, when UF journalism student Heather Collins contacted Boca magazine’s John Shuff for a school paper about the history of a Florida publication, she did not know that eight years later, she’d be calling again—for something much more personal.
In 2000, Heather (now Collins-Grattan Floyd) was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease that Shuff has had for more than 40 years. Collins-Grattan Floyd asked Shuff to write a forward to her self-published book on MS entitled “Game Over, MS” in which she explores her journey with the disease—and her helpful advice for coping with it.
Collins-Grattan Floyd says that “during those first few years after diagnosis, [I] developed an all-encompassing solution” which involved following the Blood Type Diet (in addition to whatever medication MS patients are taking), which she narrows it down to just two or three foods to avoid for whatever blood type the person with MS has.
She devised the acronym SYSTEMS “to help the reader remember the seven important (but simple) things to follow in keeping MS at bay.”
But she returns again and again to what she calls “Mr. Shuff’s foreword” which she calls “characteristically intriguing, and you can hear his voice like you do in his ‘My Turn’ articles.” As Collins-Grattan Floyd says, she and Shuff “hope to foster just that, hope—replacing tears with smiles—alongside the knowledge that God has a purpose to absolutely everything. Some lessons in life are just a lot more humbling than others, and MS delivers a constant lesson in humbleness.”
To get a copy of Collins-Grattan Floyd’s book, please visit heatherbooks.com
