I’m still struggling to get my head around my recent diagnosis. I find myself getting on with my life, as if nothing has changed and then I’ll have a little niggle, or the tingling in my leg is more prominent than usual. It’ll hit me. And I won’t cry or get upset but I’ll feel really strange for a while.

I’m getting counselling through our company Employee Assistance Programme. If you’ve got this facility where you work, if you ever need someone to talk to, use it. I cannot put into words how valuable it is!

I’ve opted for e-counselling because for the most part, I feel fine. Which scares me. I have it in my head that I should be “not ok” at the moment. Because I feel fine, I wonder if I just don’t get it. Really I want to just dig into how I’m feeling a little bit to see if I’m in shock, in denial, or genuinely as ok as I feel! If I’m not ok, I’d rather drag those feelings up now and deal with them.

I believe that MS started for me in about 2011. I went to the doctors with tingling feet. They felt like they were freezing constantly. Apart from the tingling, I had no sensation in my feet and I struggled keeping my ballet pump style shoes on my feet. I went to the doctors about this and was told “no it’s not poor circulation” and “no we don’t know what it is so off you go for an MRI”. I never heard the results of that MRI, and because the tingling had more or less gone, I didn’t really think anything of it.

My next memory of anything particularly significant was in October 2013. I woke up one morning with double vision and the room spinning, and no, I hadn’t been drinking the night before. The only way to describe the sensation though, was the feeling you get when you lie down on the bed after a good night out and it’s spinning!

I went to the doctors the next day. My doctor sprung into action, saying he thought I might have had a mini stroke. I got sent to hospital for more tests. I had a CT scan as well as all the blood tests under the sun. I remember walking along the road like I was drunk. It was awful. I must have looked like the local alcoholic.

I usually wear contact lenses, but to help with the double vision I had to wear my glasses and place a prism over my left lens. It looked TERRIBLE and I was so worried I’d end up always having to wear my glasses (something I’d never been keen on).

After some googling, it was apparent to me that my symptoms were very much like “Labyrinthitis”. I never really got a diagnosis, but I did get my ears syringed and a five week sick note.

(I must just add, having your ears syringed is a lovely sensation and not the slightest bit uncomfortable like it sounds!)

After five weeks off, I went back into work. Everything I’d read about Labyrinthitis suggested that the best thing to do is get on with your life and retrain your brain because it can hang around for months, years even.

At about the six week mark, and just one week into my return to work, I was virtually symptom free. I never got a formal diagnosis and I didn’t need to return for another sick note so that was the end of any medical attention.