Kim Cooper rustled under the covers of her hospital bed and for the first time in about three years noticed her feet weren't cold and tingling.

The North Bay mother is among a steady stream of Canadians with multiple sclerosis traveling to San Jose, Costa Rica for a medical procedure not offered in Canada to unblock neck veins using a balloon technique similar to angioplasty to restore blood flow to the brain.

"I was frustrated I couldn't have this done here, and I had to travel, and we had to spend all that money. Now that we've gone and I've done it and it was so easy and it was so positive, I'm home and I'm frustrated and angry that other people can't get it done. It's almost like survivor's guilt," said Cooper who has been on a medical leave from her human resources job since last year.

"I can't believe we're not doing it here. It's so non-invasive. It was really a day procedure. I had no recovery time. It was so simple."

There is no cure for the neurological disease that affects about 60,000 Canadians, and it's unclear what causes it.

Cooper said about 60 patients, mostly Canadians, undergo the procedure in Costa Rica every month, while others travel to parts of Europe. She said the patients are financially secure and have the means to pay at least $15,000 for the "liberation treatment" to unblock veins linked to cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, also known as CCSVI.

"We didn't see anybody down there that didn't have the means to do this, because obviously people on social assistance wouldn't be able to go. But people (with MS) who are on social assistance, that's probably why they're on a disability pension because they're losing motor functions," said her husband, Rob Cooper, an appliance repairman.

The couple celebrated her 37th birthday and their eighth wedding anniversary in central America in the days following her Oct. 11 procedure to unblock a vein in her neck. Injected dye shows a vein more than 14 millimetres wide narrowed to barely three millimetres and obstructed blood flow.