Scooter Power Puts Ms Sufferers in Control ; Health Notes

Summary

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Eight years ago Vida Ivatt, then 45 and working as a guide at Dover Castle in Kent, started to feel really strange. 'I had lots of pins and needles, episodes of dizziness and I couldn't walk in a straight line: I looked as if I was drunk.' Hospital tests including a lumbar puncture and MRI scan confirmed that Vida had multiple sclerosis (MS), which affects about 100,000 people in the UK. According to the Multiple Sclerosis Society (mssociety.org.uk), MS is the result of damage to the myelin sheath surrounding the nerve fibres of the central nervous system; this interferes with messages from the brain to other parts of the body. It can cause a wide variety of physical and cognitive symptoms, and can affect emotions too.

After a short course of steroids, Vida was well enough to take an active role in a local search and rescue team, where she met her husband David. 'I was fine most of the time. Then two years ago, the MS really kicked in. It mostly affects my legs. One leg drags and feels like cotton wool so I can't walk properly: I have to hold on to things and use a stick to get across the ground floor of our tiny cottage.'

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Scooter Power Puts Ms Sufferers in Control ; Health Notes

But for David, Vida 'would have lapsed into a deep depression but he shakes me out of it. He says he does "support but not sympathy".' David's most successful idea to date has been to get...

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