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MS is strange because it’s comparatively unusual, yet everyone seems to know someone who’s got it! So it was with me and there’s no history of MS in my family at all.
I grew up in a family of professional musicians with both parents teaching at the Royal Academy of Music. I started singing in the Temple Church choir and sang at the St Endellion Festival in Cornwall and the London Symphony Chorus. I ended University with no clear idea what I wanted to do. But through a chance conversation at St Endellion, I ended up working in financial services, after hours of interviews, in 1980. I was good at it and all was going very well indeed. Even better after I married a girl, I’d met at Leeds Uni’, in 1983.
All was going fine, professionally and personally, when a spell of double vision didn’t go. I went to my GP. He referred me to a neurologist who said it might be MS and sent me for a precautionary scan. The MRI scan at the Royal Berks’, in about June 1991, confirmed MS. When the neurologist confirmed MS, I thought my world had ended. I cried, we went back home, had a cup of coffee and I went to work. I felt fine, so why not? In fact I carried on working until 2001 when my insurance company decided to pull out of the UK. I simply took medical retirement. Life had been getting more difficult through the years and via elbow crutches and then a lightweight wheelchair, I became wheelchair-bound.
We moved house in June 2012. One of the criteria was to stay within easy reach of BMSTC. The support and advice, and humour there has been a great help for both Val and me. Luckily my MS has progressed quite slowly. I am sure that is at least in part due to the weekly physiotherapy. I know it could all change suddenly tomorrow. But I’ll just keep tomorrow at arms length!
