CAMBRIDGE — Jim Moss was a star lacrosse player when a mysterious illness suddenly sapped the strength out of his legs and hands.
Nicknamed “The Axe,” the six-foot defenceman chalked up kudos while playing 10 years with professional teams — the Albany Attack, San Jose Stealth and Colorado Mammoth.
He was a member of the Team Canada squad that won the 2006 World Lacrosse Championship and was later inducted with teammates into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in New Westminster, B.C.
He is also in the Sports Hall of Fame of Brampton, where he grew up. It describes him as an “incredibly gifted athlete” who excelled in hockey and lacrosse.
But in September 2009, Moss, now 35, suddenly found himself with a problem. His legs stopped working.
He was living then in San Jose, Calif. with his family. His wife, Jennifer, was pregnant with their second child and Moss was working for a sports equipment manufacturer and training for the fall season with the Colorado Mammoth.
“I lost my feeling in my feet and hands and I lost my co-ordination in my legs. Then, in the next 48 hours, I couldn’t walk,” Moss recalls.
At a hospital in California, doctors treated him for Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves. Symptoms range from weakness and a tingling sensation to paralysis.
Moss and his wife tried to keep calm while they wondered about a future without his full use of his limbs, without sports, without his livelihood.
And it was difficult for relatives to see the man they knew as a “full-on athlete,” a former captain of the San Jose Stealth, barely able to walk.
One day in hospital, Moss says, he was presented with two choices.
A nurse on morning shift who was helping him to the bathroom told him that he had better get used to his condition — because it might be his reality for a long time.
Eight hours later, a different person, a night-shift nurse, was helping him.
“But she said, ‘Don’t you worry about it, sweetheart. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.’
“It hit me like a ton of bricks that what we say has such an impact,” Moss says. And he and Jennifer knew which words they wanted to believe.
“We chose the night nurse’s viewpoint.”
Optimistic by nature, Moss started blogging, using a laptop computer and his Facebook page to write a “gratitude journal” about his experience. It was therapeutic to write, he says, and he was able to let fans and friends know what was happening.
The name of his blog? Why Moving Sideways is Actually Still Moving Forward.
Moss says he was grateful to have access to the best medical care, for excellent health insurance that helped cover costs that climbed to half a million dollars. He was also grateful for the health of his wife and two children.
“As soon as you can find something to be grateful about, you realize it’s not as bad as it could have been.”
Doctors told him his positive attitude helped to improve his condition. In six weeks, he was able to walk with two arm canes. He received physiotherapy and other assistance at home.
Gradually, he says, he recognized that “with my heart and what I still had to offer the world,” it didn’t matter if he couldn’t use his legs.
“It was my ‘Aha’ moment. You recognize it, but you’re still in the grieving period.”
Six months after that “Aha” moment, the couple moved back to Canada and bought a house in Waterloo so they could be close to supportive family members.
Moss became a stay-at-home dad and Jennifer launched a marketing and public relations company, Spark Plug Consulting.
“We’re figuring out how to work differently,” she says.
Interviewed recently in Cambridge, where Jennifer’s parents live, Moss described his plans for the future. He’s completing a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University and plans to continue his education until he has his PhD, specializing in social psychology.
He’s also seeing a neurologist because it has been determined that he has a movement disorder, not Guillain-Barre syndrome as originally diagnosed.
“We don’t know what it is yet,” he says. “It has persisted.”
Every six to 10 weeks, he experiences a loss of strength, co-ordination and sensation in his hands. He also loses the ability to walk. The symptoms can last three to 21 days.
While he rests, he reads everything he can about the power of positive psychology. He also keeps his eyes and ears open to valuable lessons.
From his bed, for example, he noticed that it made him happy to hear his children, Wyatt, 5, and Olivia, 2, laughing in the bathtub.
Moss developed a passion for the positive. He became an instructor for a Toronto-based business, the Happiness Enhancement Group, which does consulting, coaching, training and research for companies and their employees with an aim to increase happiness and business success.
Earlier this year, he launched another blog, www.thesmileepidemic.com.
On his “shared digital gratitude journal,” Moss encourages people to think about what makes them smile. Then he asks them to post a photo of themselves holding up a picture of a smile in front of their faces, with a few words describing what makes them happy.
The result is scores of photographs from people with simple expressions of gratitude.
Some examples: “Having a special person say, ‘I miss you,’ ” and “When you make the universal motion of ‘pull the horn’ for a truck driver and they do,” and “No more chemo.”
Students and teachers have used the blog in their classrooms, Moss says, adding that children who think more positively are less likely to bully or be bullied. They also appear to get better grades and enjoy school more.
Moss won a local grant to adapt The Smile Epidemic for schools and the blog caught the attention of producers of a TV documentary series called Truth on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) Canada. His segment is to air in September, he says.
A local company is undertaking his “30 Days of Happiness” challenge. Its employees are posting their pictures on the blog every day for a month.
For Moss, it comes down to this — if you look for things you’re grateful for, you will find them. Eventually, you will not have to look so hard.
“By telling your brain to be aware, it goes off and looks for positive things in a subconscious way,” he says. “It’s how you scan the world.
“It’s not that negative things don’t happen,” Moss says. “It doesn’t make tornadoes stop happening or stop cancer.”
But finding the positive “helps us focus on what’s important,” he says. “It gives resources for the big things in life.”
• Jim Moss will be one of the speaker at Ignite Charity: Waterloo on Sept. 12. He can be reached at jim@thesmileepidemic.com.
baggerholm@therecord.com