Mum of the Month June - Lorna Murray Cahill
Lorna Murray Cahill
Mum of two Lorna Murray Cahill was just 28 when she was told she had Multiple Sclerosis (MS) but she’s using her zest for life and fundraising skills to show that a diagnosis doesn’t have to mean the end of the world.
When you’re faced with a life changing diagnosis, things become dark quite quickly. Lorna Murray Cahill was just 28 when she was diagnosed with MS. It was six months after she married Shane and she felt the bottom fall out of her world.
“I’ve had MS for nearly 11 years now and that blows my mind. I was super fit at the time, probably the fittest I’d ever been and when I found out I had MS I nearly fell off the chair.
“When I look back there were real clear signs that there was something going on, but I just never thought it could be MS. I got this thing called Optic Neuritis, a swelling of your optic nerve, which is the bit that links your eye and your brain. Sometimes it can be an isolated incident but sometimes it can be an indication that you have MS, which it was for me.
“I had worked as a carer years before in a holiday home in the UK for people with disabilities. It was a brilliant place. But my understanding of MS from being there was of people in electric wheelchairs with catheters and not being able to live independently. I thought of it as a really debilitating disease.
“When I was diagnosed, we had just gotten married and all I could think was if I can just get pregnant and give Shane a child, it won’t have been for nothing. Who knows what will happen to me? I’ll probably be in a wheelchair but at least he’ll have a child. This was all in my head and I never actually said it out loud to anybody.
“Fortunately, I actually got pregnant about a year after we got married and we had our son Harry who absolutely changed my life.
“The whole experience of being diagnosed and only being 28 had been tough. What’s really difficult about MS is the not knowing, you just have no idea if it’s going to be really progressive or if you’ll get really unwell very quickly. You think it isn’t supposed to happen to 28-year-olds, so your mind goes into overdrive and you overthink everything. I definitely think that I was massively grieving for a life that I thought I’d have.
“But once I had Harry, I kind of realised that I’m a mum most importantly, but I’m also a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend, an employee and an aunty and I have MS. It’s not everything, it doesn’t define me. At the beginning I was so fixated on the diagnosis that I couldn’t see past what had happened, but after Harry I remembered that there are loads of other great parts of me. I am important in other people’s lives for lots of reasons and MS isn’t everything or the only thing about me.
“Then three years after Harry arrived, I had our daughter Sophia and I was very unwell. I had multiple relapses and it was very difficult for the first two years of her life. She also had colic and I had no sleep and that’s not a good mix with MS. We tried a few different medications and thankfully found one that works really well for me and I’m still on that one now.
“I feel very privileged to be a mum, having my children was definitely like my life jacket.”
Lorna, who works in a community hub for adults with intellectual disabilities wanted to take her experience of living with MS and use it to show people that a diagnosis doesn’t have to be the end of life as you know it.
“I wanted people to see this image of MS, my version of it, because it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be totally debilitating for everyone. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, I’m only 38, things could change massively. But I try not to think about the future anymore, and sure when you’re a busy mum you don’t really have the time anyway. I like to go to work be a mum, be a wife, be a friend and do all the normal things that I enjoy.
“I, like lots of people, found Covid hard and because I have MS I had to shelter, so I wasn’t going to work. All of a sudden people knew about my condition. I had always been quite private about my MS, I think it made me feel stronger. I always thought that if I was in a room and they said someone in here has MS, no one would ever think it was me. But then when Covid happened people were asking why I wasn’t working and why I was staying at home.”
Lorna decided to take action and joined the MS Ireland May 50k fundraising challenge, which involved walking or running 50 kilometres in May to raise money for research into MS. She is not only smashing the distance but the fundraising too. So far, she has raised over €3,000.
“When I saw the May 50k challenge and I thought, you know what, I can’t run because of my MS but I can walk it. And then when that went well, I said I’ll do 100k. Then I had this daft brainwave about a week ago where I thought, I am flying this so I’ll do 200k. Then that evening I came home and lay down on the floor and thought, no I can’t do this. I pulled it back to 150k, so that’s where I am now.
“I used the challenge as a chance to meet up with people I hadn’t seen in ages and asked them if they’d like to do a few kilometres with me and I’ve sort of built awareness.
“But really, I wanted to do it so that if someone got the diagnosis now, they would never have to feel the way I felt. They could see me doing this and feel ok about what was happening.
“I know that I’m very lucky. I’m in an MS social group in North Country Dublin and pre Covid we’d meet up for a drink. I know that within that group that there are people who are just five or ten years older than me who are much worse than me. I’m not deluded, and I don’t think that everything’s rosy and will always be fine because I know that’s not the case. But for me I try to focus on the here and now.”