One Woman and her Westie, Walk the West Highland Way.

18 months ago I was diagnosed with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) – It is a type of MS, this diagnosis gives me around a 60% to up to 85% chance of getting MS in the years to come. Not what you want to hear in your mid 40’s, that’s for sure. As a registered nurse for the last 23 years, working mainly as either a District Nurse, Community Matron and now as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner, my imagination ran away with itself, although I have to say my two fabulous Consultants in Glasgow Dr K Dani, and Dr Amy Davidson, spent time with me so that I understood what was happening at the moment in time, rather than where my head was running to, all the Poorly/End stage MS patients I had looked after over the years.

I spent a good few months feeling very sorry myself, concentrating on all the things that might go wrong. Then one day I had an epiphany moment! What if this is as good as my body will be! I told myself I need to stop waiting till I felt better to do things, and instead get on with it. So I started Yoga, which helped hugely (all those annoying aches and pains that you get, that I would convince myself was the MS’s progressing –Vanished, turned out I was just unfit, and needed to engage my core) Yoga gave me the confidence to join a HIT class 3-4 times a week. I had gotten fit so what was my next challenge going to be?

While multi-tasking one evening as I like to do, I was listening to Waypoints: My Scottish Journey by Sam Heughan (Sam is a gorgeous talented Scottish Actor who plays Jamie Fraser in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander TV series) a life story & Walk along the West Highland Way. I was also flicking through Facebook seeing what the truly inspirational Pumpkin the paralysed Westie was getting up to, (you can find out more about her here: pumpkin & friends charity 1199484 - search results | Facebook .)

So Sam never gave up on his acting dream, Pumpkin never gave up her zest for life, and Pumpkins humans never gave up on her – that combined with Westie and West Highland way twirling around in my head, and, I thought In 2023 I’m going to walk the West Highland Way, with my very own 16 month old Westie Isla. If I was going to put myself through this trek I thought I would try and raise £500, £250, for Pumpkin and Friends and £250, for Scotland’s MS Society any donation that you could give will be greatly appreciated and spur me on to succeed.