News

MS Ireland is conducting a repeat of a 2016 comprehensive survey of the needs of people with MS. The results of the survey will help us to plan our services and will inform our ongoing advocacy work. It will also help to inform us of where there are gaps currently in service provision and the information gathered will offer us an evidence based platform to campaign on your behalf. It is therefore very important that we get as many responses as possible – this is a vital opportunity for people with MS to have their voices heard and make their needs known. The survey takes approximately 15-30 minutes to complete. All responses will be anonymous and the questionnaire does not ask for any personal information. We would like to assure you that the information gathered will only be used for the purposes stated above.

To complete the survey click here.

We have known each other for a while now. I was diagnosed 14 years ago, but you were lurking in the shadows long before. You take up so much space in my head! What on earth did I think about before you came along? Why won’t you leave me alone? Why won’t you leave the other 2.8 million people you affect alone?

Happy New Year to all the MS & Me readers and your families!

As we move into 2023 in earnest, we’re excited to announce a spin-off from the MS & Me blog, an MS & Me webinar series entitled “The Unspeakable Bits”. The first one is set to air, live, from 20:00 on Thursday, 26th January (Join host Trevis L Gleason and a panel of MS professionals to talk about a Healthy Body: Healthy Brain on Thursday, 26th at 8:00pm* Register here).

Happy New Year! What is it about the turning of the year that has us reviewing everything? Planning, making arbitrary promises, our social channels flooded with infinite numbers of articles about changing habits or ‘living your best life’ (??).  

This week from the MS & Me blog archive Joan Jordan shares how she is *learning* to have a stress free Christmas.

There are the parts of Christmas I love, like time with family, winter walks, twinkling lights and evenings by a cosy fire. But the parts I like don’t always gel well with my MS. As a result, Christmas can turn into something of a marathon for me and excitement tends to quickly give way to dread when I realise there is no way my body will cope with all the festivities.

This Christmas, it is time to gather your family and friends, work colleagues, school pupils and youth groups, or you local club members, and don your best (or worst!) festive Christmas Jumpers!

Let me share an incident that happened to me on a Luas recently. I was lucky enough to have nabbed the last available seat on a packed tram at rush hour in Dublin. I noticed an older lady standing beside me and I could nearly predict the scene that unfolded before my eyes. A Good Samaritan noticed that this older passenger needed a seat and looked straight in my direction. She asked me to give up my seat for somebody more deserving and I replied no. The Good Samaritan proceeded to shout all over the Luas about my lack of common decency and how people these days have no manners or respect. Outwardly I looked ok, this woman had no idea that I had been enduring MS fatigue since the moment I had woken up that day.