While the purpose of this site is to highlight my own personal fundraising campaign events to get myself to Russia in 2018.... I also would hope that it can be a valuable resource for anyone who might gain from my experience in dealing with this disease. I am my own medical advocate and everything on here would be what I have learned from personal experience and meeting some incredible people and getting to know what they have experienced.
MS is often called the disease with 1000 faces, can be difficult to diagnose but like everything... knowledge is power! and I wasted a lot of time!!
What is MS?
An estimated 6000 people in Ireland have MS. So in a small country everyone will know someone suffering from the disease. Women are nearly twice as likely to get MS as men. Most people start developing symptoms between the ages of 20 and 40 but in the end it is completely random who it affects.
So what the feck is PPMS??
Well there is no good MS but there are 4 types (see below) and I was lucky enough to get the least common version PPMS... Hurrah!!
Just 10% of MS-essers suffer from PPMS and what it means that you suffer symptoms from the beginning but the 'progression' is so slow it can not appear so debilitating in the beginning and as in my case 
Picture
I was first diagnosed as having MS on January 24th 2016 in a quite comical meeting by the highly regarded neurologist Professor Xavi Montalban of Cemcat a fantastic MS specialised institution in Barcelona. 
(for the retelling see MY PPMS STORY)
Unimpressed with my MRI quality I would have to do further tests until June 16 when I was definitively diagnosed with PPMS, with the caveat that I had the least common type and there was 'no cure, no treatment!!' #winning
After the exhausting 4 year search for a diagnosis that had taken me 1000s of km within Brasil, across an ocean, back home to Ireland and subsequently my 'other European home' Barcelona while certainly not good news there was relief to know what was wrong with me!
PictureSome Stem Cells yesterday...
HSCT - Human Stem Cell Therapy
For fear of this site turning into a medical site and boring everyone, to paraphrase this is a non FDA approved treatment which means it is not available in many countries despite being performed in hospitals all over the world but one doctor and his Moscow clinic have been having amazing results since 1989!!! (Check the WHY RUSSIA? pages for full details)
Put simply my immune system is malfunctioning and attacking my lovely nerves and HSCT using Chemo blasts this stupid immune system to pieces, so stopping the progress of the disease... then it is rebooted with my brand spanking new lovely stem cells avoid every fecker with flu for a while and let the recovery begin to regain much of my lost fantasticness!!!
Below is a short video of an Australian lady who underwent the exact same treatment... SICK OF THIS NOW I WANT!!
THE 4 TYPES OF MS
  • Relapsing-Remitting MS (RRMS). This is the most common form of multiple sclerosis. About 85% of people with MS are initially diagnosed with RRMS. People with RRMS have temporary periods called relapses, flare-ups or exacerbations, when new symptoms appear
  • Secondary-Progressive MS (SPMS). In SPMS, symptoms worsen more steadily over time, with or without the occurrence of relapses and remissions. Most people who are diagnosed with RRMS will transition to SPMS at some point
  • Primary-Progressive MS (PPMS). This type of MS is not very common, occurring in about 10% of people with MS. PPMS is characterized by slowly worsening symptoms from the beginning, with no relapses or remissions
  • Progressive-Relapsing MS (PRMS). A rare form of MS (5%), PRMS is characterized by a steadily worsening disease state from the beginning, with acute relapses but no remissions, with or without recovery​
People from Northern Europe (including Ireland), America and Canada are more likely to develop MS than Asian people, Eskimos and American Indians.

Same hospital, same doctor, hopefully the same result as this lady...