The expatriate New Yorker was dealt a series of body blows in his 40s that anyone would have found difficult to handle. A car accident that broke his back in two places was bad enough. And then came the big one.

Feeling lousy for a long time, he consulted a doctor. The diagnosis was devastating.

Multiple Sclerosis.

"There is nothing we can do for you," the doctor said. "You should go home."

"You hear that, and you just get more depressed," Flayton said.

His marriage collapsed and his weight ballooned. Depressed, he drifted away from his work as a successful production manager at top agencies.

"My life fell apart," he said flatly.

Moving to Chapel Hill, something a lot affluent northerners find attractive, didn't help much.

"I love Chapel Hill, but leaving New York was very, very difficult for me," Flayton said.

MS is a disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system, manifesting its assault on the brain and spinal cord through symptoms like numbness or tingling in the limbs and a general creeping weakness. Sometimes the symptoms are mild, but they always progress, and MS sufferers tend to live years fewer than the general population's average.

A lot of people might have taken the doctor's advice and retreated to a darkened room to spend their days watching TV.

Flayton, now 58, recalls what he did instead.

"I come from a good background. I'd always been athletic. I knew what to do," Flayton said. "I just got out there and started exercising."

His former wife, with whom he still had a good relationship, advised he take up swimming. She'd been a competitive swimmer in college. Try the local YMCA, she said.

Flayton took up membership in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA, located at 980 Martin Luther King Blvd., which has a full gym, exercise equipment and, important to Flayton, a full-sized pool.

When he first slipped into the pool shortly after dawn one morning last year, he was 289 pounds. Now, 9 months later, Flayton is 6-feet-2, 185 pounds dripping wet.

His dramatic transformation is a living testimony to the fact that "It's amazing what water can do to improve one's quality of life," YMCA Senior Program Director Nicki Smith said. "You don't have to go to extremes to get its benefits."

Flayton is waiting most weekday mornings at the YMCA when it opens at 5:30 a.m., and he likes swimming laps. But almost any exercise in water can benefit overweigh people, Smith said.

Easier on the joints than walking or running, water exercise also offers constant resistance for multiple muscles, and it provides hydrostatic pressure on the entire body, which benefits lung and heart functions. And, of course, the natural massage of water passing around the body just plainly feels good, Smith observes.

Flayton also enjoys the collegial atmosphere at the Y, where a cadre of early morning risers makes a routine of lap swimming.

"There's nothing better than exercise for coping with depression," said Flayton, who also walks 2-4 miles daily. "And there's nothing better than the Y for getting exercise. I love the YMCA. It's like a family there, and that has really helped me."

Flayton knows the MS is still there. Sometimes he's dizzy, and some days he left fatigued.

"But it seems like it's under control most days. It's not the worst thing in the world," Flayton said.

"I will not let MS stop me. I'm just going to keep on going."