Sylvia Wright has had progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) since 1994. She was also born with two half-wombs and one kidney. She met her husband Steve in 1999 when he sold her a mobility scooter.
She didn't believe she could have children or carry to term, but in 2005 her son Marcus was born.
From 1998, she recovered in a major way and took a leap of faith (literally!) by doing a tandem skydive and by changing her diet and attitude. This new positivity helped her battle MS for years. Despite this since about 2009 the MS has progressed, to the stage where she is now severely disabled and need lots of care and help. Don't feel too sorry for her though, as she's in a better position now, thanks to the NHS, than she was in 2012, when she weighed less than six stone and was on the way out.
To repeat, she's in a better position now. This being despite:
1. Multiple operations, including the insertion of a baclofen pump (for pain relief), cutting her hamstrings to ease the pain of muscle spasms and removing bladder stones.
2. Being hospitalised multiple times for septicaemia, sepsis (caused by kidney stones) and pneumonia. On top of all this, being rushed to hospital after overdosing on water - yes water - as she had a compulsion that meant she drank and drank.
3. Having to be brought back by the Crash Team in December 2018.
These events all sound pretty major but in many ways they pale into insignificance when compared to Sylvia making it through her everyday life; everyday life that has got substantially harder over the years and much, much, worse since Steve passed away in August 2020 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
If you are looking for negativity from Sylvia or from her situation, you will not find it here. Nor will you find a person who sits and lets Life and Love fly past them like straws in the wind.
Miss them if you will, and be depleted by that.
Sylvia won't.
