Introduction

There are things that only happen to other people. Usually they are rare things, such as winning the lottery. They aren’t the everyday things such as having a baby; they are the not-so-everyday things – not being able to have a baby.

Well, I have one of those not-so-everyday things. I have multiple sclerosis. I am somebody else.

Apparently there are 85,000 people (give or take) in the UK with MS. Everybody seems to know somebody with MS. Yet almost nobody actually has MS.

Your cousin’s sister has it; your auntie’s doctor; your best friend’s mother’s sister. They all have it, but the person you know doesn’t have it. Isn’t that slightly odd?

As best I can make out, I’m even more of a somebody else. I am male and I was diagnosed with MS at the age of 44 – on 29 March 2007, to be precise. Apparently, MS mostly affects women under 40. I suppose that statistic would once upon a time have been some comfort to me – that it was one less thing to worry about.

Well, not that I especially worried about anything to do with my health. I’ve always been generally fit, never missed more than the odd day from work with anything really.

But now I have something. Well, for a little over a year I’ve had something, but I didn’t know what it was for most of that time. If you get my drift.

So anyway, this is my story of a short journey to where I am today.

To you I am somebody else. You can be content in your life that it is to the likes of me that inconvenient things happen.

To me (and to those who truly know me) I know I am somebody.