From bedbound to 5am runner: Leeds mum helps power £100m MS appeal
A Leeds mum once too ill to get out of bed is now up running at 5am - and using her Multiple sclerosis (MS) journey to help drive a national £100m research push.
Niti Patel, 44, from New Farnley, was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease 12 years ago.
She is now taking part in the MS Society’s Stop MS Appeal through the charity’s latest nationwide project, MS Letters - in which people living with MS explore their journey by writing a letter to their younger self or someone significant to them.
Explaining why she wanted to write a letter to her younger self, Niti said: “I think I've become a lot more confident now and I worry less than I would have when I was diagnosed.
“I’m telling my past self that it is going to be OK and to take it a day at a time and just deal with whatever comes your way. You can still be the person you want to be, which I am now doing.”
Her experience of MS has changed significantly since her diagnosis.
She said: “When I was diagnosed I was really poorly and I was still working, but every weekend I would be in bed, and my husband would be doing everything.
‘Now I'm waking up at 5am every day going running. So I hope that if someone has just been diagnosed and they read my letter, they have hope for themselves. That they're not scared. MS will affect your life, but it doesn’t need to stop you from living your life.”
MS affects the brain and spinal cord, impacting how people move, think and feel.
More than 150,000 people live with the condition in the UK, and many experience symptoms that can’t be seen.
Niti, who works as a service design and transition manager at NHS England, says misunderstandings remain common.
She said: “Sometimes I get comments like ‘oh, you're poorly and you'll get over it’. But the thing is with MS, there is no cure. Once you've got nerve damage, you can't reverse that.
“People sometimes don't believe that there's anything wrong with me because my symptoms are invisible.
“If there was more understanding, to me that would just be the best thing in the world. That's why I like to raise as much awareness as I can to help get that message through to people.”
The MS Society’s Stop MS Appeal launched 10 years ago and is now close to reaching its £100m target.
Funding has already supported major advances in research, including the groundbreaking Octopus clinical trial, which could find treatments for progressive MS up to three times faster.
Nick Moberly, Chief Executive of the MS Society, said: “For tens of thousands of people, a diagnosis of progressive MS can mean a future with no available treatments. But we can change that - and we won't stop until there are treatments that slow or stop disability progression for everyone.
“We’ve made remarkable progress since the start of the Stop MS Appeal and we’re so close to reaching our £100m target.
“This is a pivotal moment in history for the treatment of progressive MS and we’re so grateful to Niti for being a part of that. We hope their story will encourage people to donate and help us transform lives through MS research.”