By Bonny Burrows
A Berwick mother-of-two will in August travel to Russia in a bid to halt the progression of her Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
Leanne Sherer has been suffering with the condition since she awoke on Australia Day 2013 with numbness all down the left side of her body.
Believing she had a stroke, the then 48 year-old, went to her local doctor, who rushed her to hospital, where the nurse on duty had her suspicions that she had MS and booked Ms Sherer in for an MRI.
“Within three months I was diagnosed with MS and it just, it changes your world as you knew it,” Ms Sherer said.
MS is an auto-immune disease which attacks the Central Nervous System and destroys the protective coating on the nerves, stopping brain signals from passing along the nerves.
It can affect all parts of the body, halting or interfering with their function.
Following her diagnosis, Ms Sherer commenced on MS medication which seemed to keep her MS at bay and life continued fairly normally with only slight symptoms.
“Some days were good, some days were bad. It’s just how MS is. It’s a strange disease,” Ms Shearer said.
All seemed to be going ok until December 2016 when she began to find it harder to walk on her right leg.
This weakness progressed up Ms Sherer’s arm and into her right hand, and was followed by daily with pain in her legs and arms, stiffness, mental and physical fatigue and balance and walking issues.
A year on with no success with treatment, Ms Sherer was finding it difficult to accomplish regular daily activities.
Desperate for relief, Ms Sherer and her daughters Tara Edgley and Kirri Sherer began researching other options, including a hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT).
According to her daughters, HSCT is a highly successful treatment that stops MS.
It involves having stem cells extracted and put on ice while the patient has four days of high intensity chemotherapy.
“Once the stem cells are transplanted back, the body will then regenerate a new immune system, resetting it and stopping the body attacking the central nervous system and halting the MS,” Kirri and Tara said.
Unfortunately, the treatment is unavailable in Australia, so Ms Sherer has to travel to Russia for the procedure.
This doesn’t come without a hefty price tag of $80,000 Australian which includes the costs of full treatment, flights, accommodation and recovery costs upon return to Australia.
Friends, family and colleagues have supported the family with donations to help cover the cost, however they are still well short of their goal, and are appealing to the local community for support.
They hate to ask for the assistance, but say they are left with no choice.
“It is not good enough that the medications that are available in Australia just slow down the progression of this disease when there is a treatment available overseas that has a very high success rate of halting the disease for good,” Kirri and Tara said.
“Our mum is not a person who usually asks for anything, however she strongly believes that this is her best shot at stopping this dreadful disease before too much more damage is done to her body.
“This is the last resort to prevent our mum’s health from deteriorating further and will give her a significantly better quality of life.”
Donations can be made at: https://www.gofundme.com/ourmumsmsjourneytorussia-leannesherer.
