Multiple sclerosis: The power of positive thought

When I was younger, I remember being told by my grandfather to make sure that whatever path I chose to take in life, I should make sure I lived it to the full. He was a big believer in not letting life just pass you by. I responded in that typical teenage way: ‘Of course I will, I know what I’m doing.’ Little did I realise that 10 years later those words would take on a very real meaning. How I wish he had lived to see me take them on board.

17th November 1997
The day my life changed forever, my D-Day. After more than a year of tests, examinations and being poked around by various doctors, I was finally given my diagnosis. I sat there in the small room and listened to my neurologist say the words: ‘I am very sorry to tell you this, but I think you knew it was coming. You have multiple sclerosis.’ I thought that the bottom had fallen out of my world. I barely heard a word of what he said after that. I was in a daze. Someone had finally said the words I had been dreading for the past 12 months. Despite all the symptoms – the blurred vision, the pins and needles in my limbs, the panic attacks and occasional back pains – I had always hoped that maybe it was just stress or fatigue. Hoped that one day I would wake up and the aches would be gone. Now that would never happen.

I went home, shut myself in my room, and cried. All I could think was that everything I had always taken for granted – getting married, having a family, playing with my children, even becoming an abseiling granny – suddenly didn’t seem so possible any more. How would I ever find anyone who would want to spend the rest of their life with me if there was a possibility they would have to spend a large chunk of married life caring for me? I was only 25. How could this have happened to me? All I could see was a bleak future.

A couple of days later my thoughts changed to a bitter acceptance. I kept thinking that if I was going to be a cripple anyway then why not just do what the hell I wanted to do – it wouldn’t make any difference. I started, subconsciously, on a path to self-destruction. I stopped working at my career, choosing to run away abroad instead. I took a bar job with as few hours as possible and started drinking and smoking heavily. I was going out every night until the early hours, telling friends who tried to help me to keep their noses out – after all, they didn’t know what it was like did they?