Hi everyone, I’m Ailsa. I’m a 25 year old girl just trying to do her best!

In 2022, just a month after a 2 year battle with lymphatic cancer, my dad was tragically diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

MND is a progressive disease that attacks the motor neurones, or nerves, in the brain and spinal cord. This means messages gradually stop reaching muscles, which leads to weakness and wasting. Eventually resulting in death

MND can affect how you walk, talk, eat, drink and breathe.

The average lifespan for the type of MND that my dad has is 2-5 years. We’re now in year 6!

We are incredibly grateful that dad has outlived the expectations of everyone involved in his care, and we realise how lucky we are. However, we know that this is not the case for everyone.

MND throws new changes and challenges at you everyday, with no warning. These are often exceptionally hard to adapt to and can feel like your entire world is crumbling in front of you

As a family, we try and live every day to the fullest and try to see the good where we can. However, as we try to maintain this positive outlook on life, it often gets overlooked how much the physical and emotional toll this disease takes on our family.

The MNDA understand this in a way most people will not. They help us to provide a better quality of life for dad with essential, life-saving equipment. As well as emotional support and grief counselling. Their work is absolutely incredible, and it’s so important to us to fund their work and their research.

Although we already know the end to this story, we will not stop until we find a cure and live in a world free of MND!