by Stephen Blease
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
To look at, Sarah Ransley is the picture of health. You would never guess that she has a chronic illness – until she lists her symptoms.
There is numbness, dizziness, nausea, balance and mobility problems, difficulties with dexterity, aches in different parts of the body – and overwhelming fatigue.
“I’ve been tired since I was 14,” she says.
Sarah, 26, is one of an estimated 1,000 people in Cumbria and 100,000 in the UK who are living with multiple sclerosis.
As with all celebrity-related news it is receiving a lot of attention.
Sarah is hoping this new attention could dispel some of the misconceptions about it. For one thing MS is not a terminal illness. It can leave you weak, disabled and feeling very unwell but it is not fatal, as some seem to believe.
It’s also extremely varied. “People think MS and they think ‘wheelchair’,” she points out. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”
Some people do need a wheelchair as the disease advances, but most, like Sarah, go through periods of feeling very unwell followed by periods when some of the symptoms subside partially or completely.
Sarah, of Newfield, Carlisle, is upbeat, articulate and happy to talk about the condition. “I’ve got a collection of multi-coloured walking sticks – one for each outfit!” she jokes.
But she remembers well the fear and isolation she felt when she first discovered she had a debilitating illness.
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