Thanks so much for taking the time to visit our Just Giving page.  I'm Harri and I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in May 2016.  As an otherwise healthy 30 year old mother of one, it was a huge shock, the scariest thing I'd ever faced and something that changed my life forever.  But amongst the crying, denial and anger, I'll always remember what my dad said to me: "Harri, you may have MS, but it will never have you".  And even though some days it can be hard to think like that, I realised that is exactly the fighting spirit I had to adopt.  

There are lots of negatives about MS; the symptoms, the uncertainty, the fact there is no cure and the side effects of the treatments to name just a few. But I also can't help but acknowledge that having MS drives me every day to embrace life, to step out of my comfort zone and to do things that I probably wouldn't have done a year ago.  Like a 10k.  

So we're doing it all over again... This year we've added a new team member, family friend Paul Hine and he, my dad and me will be setting out to conquer the Disneyland Paris 10k while my sister Charlie and her husband Frank take on the 36k challenge (5k on Friday, 10k on Saturday and half marathon on Sunday - what were they thinking?!). 

We might have MS, but it will never have us.  

Read My Full Story Here:

For those of you who don’t know, MS is an auto-immune condition, which means your immune system mistakes part of your body for a foreign substance and attacks it. In the case of MS, it attacks the myelin sheath in the brain or spinal cord and can cause symptoms from vision problems to tingling, fatigue to mobility issues. It’s a lifelong condition although it can be treated to reduce the number of flare-ups or ‘relapses’ as they are known.

It all started when I woke up with tingling in the right side of my body, from my toes to my upper torso. I’d been having some back problems or, as I like to call it, the curse of motherhood, so I didn’t think twice. It was obviously a trapped nerve. But after three days without the symptoms subsiding, I went to my GP and he promptly sent me for an MRI. It was then that I knew. Rewind back a year and I had a totally unrelated problem with my eye that required an MRI – the eye problem turned out to be nothing, but the MRI showed some patches of inflammation in my brain and I was referred to a neurologist, who was a specialist in MS. He told me that with nothing to compare it to, the inflammations weren’t significant enough to diagnose MS and indeed that it was likely they were just something I was born with. Needless to say, when the sensory symptoms started a year later, I knew deep down that I was facing an MS diagnosis, even though on the surface I couldn’t believe it could really happen to me.

About three weeks later, the diagnosis was confirmed. And I cried. And then, as quick as a flash, I went into denial. It wasn’t happening, I was fine and even if I had MS, I was exactly as I was before. I was resolute, determined not to let it phase me. After a few weeks, my symptoms began to subside and I felt pretty much normal again. The denial was working for me, I was ignoring the MS and the tingling had all but gone.

Until, that is, I had a second relapse. And then I fell apart a little bit. I could no longer ignore it, and I could no longer deny the effects it could have on me.   Suddenly, the uncertainty of the illness was all too much to bear. You see, that’s the thing with MS, no-one can predict the progression of the disease. These relapses can happen at any time, everyone’s progression is different, and whilst many symptoms can be treated, there is always a risk that the damage will be permanent.

So as a control-freak, who likes to know anything and everything that is happening – the ‘where?’, ‘who?’, ‘what?’ and ‘why?’ of any situation – this was the hardest thing to deal with. Even though I knew I was one of the lucky ones, I had been diagnosed early and currently had what was classed as a mild form of the disease, no-one could tell me for certain what this condition would look like for me in 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years. And the fact I had two relapses in a very short period suddenly made me realize that.

The two symptoms that were the most difficult for me to come to terms with were the possibility that I could lose my mobility or my sight, and even though my prognosis is currently very good, it is a terrifying thought no matter how unlikely. Still now, even the minute prospect of it makes me well up – that one day I may not easily be able do all the things I have always taken for granted. But it was this very thought that has also helped me come to terms with it as much as I can and live my life to the fullest – that, and the people I have met who are determinedly coping with a much worse form of this condition in a way I could never imagine.

Yes, some days are still hard and I cry, and I think it’s unfair. But moving out of denial and into acceptance has allowed me, for the most part, to embrace life in a way that I never did before: to not take anything for granted; to try new things and not hold back; to care less about what people think of me. I am only at the start of my journey, but I feel positive for the future.