We recently connected with Tamara Kahn & Terry Hord Twinscoast2coast and have shared our conversation below.
Tamara Kahn & Terry Hord, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
We are the “Haber” twins. Tammy and Terry. We were born identical twin sisters in the sunshine state of Florida in 1968. Today, we go by our married names Tamara Kahn and Terry Hord. We were both diagnosed with multiple sclerosis twenty plus years ago. We have both been married for almost 30 years and have two daughters each all in their twenties. Currently, Terry lives in Atlanta and Tamara in the San Francisco Bay area. Our passions include MS related fundraising, Broadway theater and traveling. Recently, Terry was invited to join the The Board of Trustees for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Georgia Chapter.
We have created this to share the good, the bad and the funny of our lives as two twins living in both the East and West Coasts with Multiple Sclerosis. Our aim is to inspire, empower, support and educate others about the challenges of MS while also showing the positives that have followed. Our intent is to simply tell our story, imperfections and all, and hope that it connects and resonates with those going through the life journey of chronic illness, their families and friends, or anyone who enjoys our outlook and experiences. We want our followers to take our experiences we share and hopefully connect with us by commenting and sharing their stories as well. We love communicating with people all over the world and hearing the explorations of others in our community. We hope you follow along with us as we share our stories of living with multiple sclerosis.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We are the “Haber” twins. Tammy and Terry. Today we go by our married names Tamara Kahn and Terry Hord. We are both MS survivors for over 20+ years. We have created a social media platform called “TwinsCoast2Coast” to inspire, empower, support and educate others about the disease of MS. Our intent is to simply tell our story, imperfections and all, and hope that it connects and resonates with those going through the challenges of multiple sclerosis.
We were born identical twin sisters in Florida “the sunshine state” in 1968. We were happy, healthy and active children. We loved to swim, ride bikes, ice skate and play tennis. As we look back on our early years at around the age of 10, there were symptoms and signs of MS. It was 1978 and MS was not a disease doctors knew much about. At that time in our lives we were both very active in sports and extracurricular activities. In the evenings after we had finished those practices and activities, we would both have terrible tingling and pain in our legs. Our pediatrician and parents would tell us we were just experiencing “growing pains”. Our doctor told our parents to rub Vicks Vapor rub on our legs to help our “growing and aching” muscles. Oh, how we loved the cooling sensation of the Vicks being massaged into the muscles on our legs at night.
Fast forward 5 years and Terry and I are 15 years old. Our mother was 35 and diagnosed with terminal cancer. Our family unraveled at this time. Our mother’s parents, whom we were all very close with, had a terrible time grasping the idea they had a child with a terminal illness. Our father who was 39 at the time did not have the coping mechanisms necessary to deal with our mother’s disease. That left us all feeling very stressed. Our world that was once carefree and happy became a world of family stress and personal turmoil. In the winter of that same year we both became very sick with Infectious Mononucleosis* of which the Epstein Barr virus is thought to be a potential trigger, with the development of multiple sclerosis. We were both hospitalized for mononucleosis and treated. Little did we know the potential ramifications this illness had caused.
We continued to be highly positive and motivated teenagers even with the unfortunate stressors in our lives. We were both involved in many clubs and sports in high school. On several occasions during the hot humid Florida afternoons during tennis team practices we found it difficult to complete the two warm up running laps around the football field. Our legs would feel heavy and we both again experienced the flushing burning feeling down our legs. Our tennis coach had the misperception that we were not putting out an effort. This response is not uncommon as others are often not aware of the disease. We were the only two team players that unfortunately could not complete the warm ups. Looking back, these most likely represented the symptoms of early MS.
We went off to college in the fall of 1986. We were 18 years old. It was a very happy time for us. We learned to adapt to our limitations even if we did not fully understand the reasons why we felt these symptoms. We conveniently scheduled early morning classes to counterbalance the fatigue in the afternoon. We were experiencing MS fatigue and had no idea we were in the early stages of MS. Throughout it all our college years were productive and enriching for us both as we coped with our physical limitations.
The earth shook for us August 1992 when our mother passed away. She was only 44 years old and we were both 24. The emotional stress was powerful and debilitating. We found our bodies in constant pain.. We both experienced instant visual changes, body tingling, and fatigue.
The following years were filled with significant moments for the two of us. Marriage, the birth of our children and the forever life changing diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.
We look forward to continuing to share our MS journey in our blog post. We are MS advocates. We intend our social media page to be informative, inspirational, interactive and fun. Please follow along with us on our Instagram@twinscoast2coast, blog, Facebook- Twins to Coast, and YouTube.
*Per the CDC, “Infectious mononucleosis, also called “mono,” is a contagious disease. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the most common cause of infectious mononucleosis, but other viruses can also cause this disease
we are most proud of that. We share our story and live with others, living with chronic illness, family, and other medical professionals.
Tamara and Terry do you motivational speaking engagements, we are advocates, and Teri is involved with the national MS Society try to chapter board of trustees. Tammy And Terry also has been featured in a recent article for the multiple sclerosis Association of America , MSAA and we’re featured in the fall winter 2020 to 2023 magazine featuring aging in multiple sclerosis. We are on page 10.
We are proud of our website https://twinscoast2coast.com/our-story/
Website provides a wealth of knowledge for people, newly diagnosed diagnose for many many years. It also has links to our YouTube, podcast, and mini interesting articles that we have written throughout the years.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Terry was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis first in 1996. I was relieved that my twin sister Tamara had not been diagnosed. But to both the first surprise she was diagnosed just a few short yours after me.
As we had progressed 25 years later, from diagnosis, we both do not walk anymore due to the progression of our multiple sclerosis. We have been able to walk in this journey together. Be each other’s cheerleaders and straight.
We want to be a shining light on others that may be living with something difficult enter our surprise, we get letters all the time I have people saying thank you for guiding them through the journey of some sort of illness or just to say thank you for your bright light and strength in this world, and that it help them get through a bad part in life and make them stronger.
Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?
Terry, on a company called classic building and design. She had this company from 1997 until 2008. She was successful in those years and always did her research by being very intuitive about past markets as her parents were also builders and learn from back in the 1980s when interest rates were so high and they were also careful with her amount of homes they built per year.
Terri was asked to expand her business from Georgia to Florida in 2005 and realize there’s too many homes for sale and days on the market in the golf coast. She came back and started selling her lots off and it was good to know, because in the Georgia market, especially in Atlanta in market slowed way down. Many of her friends went out of business or had to restructure.
By then, Terry’s multiple sclerosis had progress and decided not to go back into building homes. She decided to go back into medical marketing as her husband doctor and worked part time
Contact Info:
- Website: https://twinscoast2coast.com/our-story/
- Instagram: Twinscoast2coast
- Facebook: Twinscoast2coast
- Linkedin: Terry Hord
- Youtube: Twins Coast to Coast
Image Credits
Photo credit by Tamara and Terry Terry on the left Tamara on the right