Today, I left work and got on the Tube. It was quite late, so there were plenty of free seats and spare copies of the newspaper lying about. I put the 'Manual of Freediving' in my satchel and picked up the Evening Standard to see this story on the front page...
You can click on the picture for a link to the full article.
The MS Society and the UK Stem Cell Foundation are jointly funding a number of studies to investigate whether the use of stem cells can help to slow, stop, or even reverse the damage caused by MS to the brain and spinal cord.
My heart always skips a beat whenever a story like this appears. They appear surprisingly frequently but it's a long and difficult road from clinical trials to an effective and affordable treatment.
When someone you love has MS, you feel so helpless watching as they get progressively more disabled. They can get much worse almost overnight, as in a relapse or attack, or it can be a gradual process. Maybe one day out shopping you notice that their leg is dragging much more than usual, or you see their hands shaking while they try to hold a mug, or you start "hugging" by linking your little fingers, because proper hugs hurt too much. Mum doesn't really open up to me about her feelings about the future of her health (she's intensely private, and that's why I haven't mentioned her more on the blog). I imagine that for Mum, as for the poet Colette Waller who I featured in my last post, it ultimately comes down to being terrified of getting worse.
So the search for better treatments or a cure for MS feels like a race against time for my family. It's fantastic to see charities collaborating to fund international clinical trials into cutting-edge treatments for MS. If there is hope that by the end of these trials a treatment is in sight that might help my Mum, then I have all the motivation I need to get me to 100ft.
To learn more about this particular research, please see the video below:
Yesterday, I managed a PB in Static of 4mins 45sec!
The day before yesterday I managed a PB in Dynamic of 120m!
No comments:
Post a Comment