The consultant’s words rang around the room. ‘The MRI results show various lesions on Alice’s brain,’ he said. ‘They are suggestive of multiple sclerosis.’ Looking at Alice, my 14-year-old daughter, I felt my head start to spin. It couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t. Because I knew, better than anyone, just how cruel a condition multiple sclerosis, or MS, was. After years of watching my mum Alison deteriorate from it she’d finally succumbed to the disease aged just 66. We’d held her funeral just the week before. And yet, here we were, with my husband and Alice’s dad Mike, at hospital, being told my teenager may have it too and I was overcome with fear and panic.
When I was a child, Mum had
