“Good, thanks” is the response often given by those with a chronic illness or disability when asked how they are – despite this being far from their reality. This series looks behind the masks of those living with chronic illness and takes you into their world. One day, you’re living your life as you always have, absentmindedly ticking tasks off your to-do list and getting to and from work without much thought.
Then, the next, everything changes. You dismissed the tingling and numbness in your hands as nothing significant, but then you feel weakness in your arms, then your legs. Little niggles can no longer be ignored.
Then you’re diagnosed with a life-changing illness. It’s a situation Emma Vulin, aged 44, knows all to well. Emma Vulin, 44, was diagnosed with the rapidly progressive neurological disease motor neurone disease.
Credit: Simon Schluter The Labor MP for Pakenham was diagnosed with the rapidly progressive neurological disease motor neurone disease, known as MND, earlier this year. MND is a debilitating condition that stops the brain from sending vital messages to the rest of the body to tell it to talk, walk, swallow and breathe. MND is terminal and the average survival time after diagnosis in Australia is two and a half years .
Vulin has seen the effects of the disease escalate quickly. “Four weeks before [the diagnosis], I was cutting up watermelon for the kids to eat, and now I can’t cut,” says Vulin. “I’m soon going to be at a point where.