Hero of the Week: MS Patient Walks Again After a Decade, Becomes Police Volunteer

The world can be a dark and dangerous place, but selflessness has the power to prevail in the most heartbreaking of circumstances. Whether it’s putting another life before your own, making someone else’s dreams come true, or paying forward random acts of kindness, everyday heroes are all around us. Every week, we take the opportunity to celebrate the most extraordinary ordinary people from all over the world who make our little blue dot a better place. Welcome to Hero of the Week.

MS is a brutal and unforgiving disease that modern medicine still doesn't fully understand. There is no cure yet, and treatments can be brutal. So seeing a report on the BBC's Panorama on the promising result of a new stem cell therapy, Roy Palmer and his wife Helen burst into tears. Two people feature on the TV segment had regained the ability to walk again thanks to a stem cell treatment known as HSCT -- so Roy asked: "Why not me?"

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The father of two had been left wheelchair-bound for a decade by multiple sclerosis (MS), a brain and/or spinal disease that affects more than 2.3 million globally. Among them Roy, who woke up one morning more then 11 years ago and couldn't get out of bed. His legs had suddenly stopped working, he told the BBC. The family rallied though, supporting him with an outpouring of live. For wife Helen it meant "trying to be the best wife and carer."

After hearing about HSCT -- short for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation --, the Gloucester dad contacted his GP, who nominated him for the experimental therapy. One year ago, Roy started the promising therapy. Two days later, he regained feeling in his legs.

While it still doesn't work for all MS patients, for Roy, it's worked miracles . Roy not only regained the use of his legs, the 49-year-old literally can't stop dancing, joyfully participating in Drake's viral KiKi Challenge, reported CBS."We went on holiday not so long ago to Turkey and I walked on the beach. It's little things like that, people do not realize what it means to me," Roy told news outlets. "It's just totally changed my life. It's like a miracle."

Roy is now enjoying life to the full with his family, and taking every opportunity to praise the medical staff, especially the nurses, who helped him get here. But it's not just words for the 49-year-old. He's become an MS Society advocate and has gotten involved in the safety of his community, only one year after the procedure. "I've been given a second chance at life, so I started volunteering at my local police station," Roy proudly told the BBC.

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