'I fell down in my 20s and got a devastating diagnosis I hid for a decade'
Kezia told as few people as possible about her illness, in the hope that would mean it wasn't real
A woman who suddenly fell down in her 20s hid the diagnosis from everyone for the next 10 years. The first sign that something was wrong with Kezia Kecibas was the sudden fall.
Kezia said: "I was walking across the room and just collapsed out of nowhere, I hadn't tripped. I hadn't fainted. My body just gave way underneath me. I thought maybe I was overtired. I was in my early twenties, was really healthy but I just started falling over nothing. My eyesight started blurring and I was just dropping things."
The unexplained fall would become the first symptom of Multiple Sclerosis – a condition that Kezia, from Cambridge, went on to hide from nearly everyone for over a decade. "An MRI scan revealed what was going on. As soon as I heard 'MS' I thought of a friend's mum who went from walking into a wheelchair pretty quickly, and then after just a few years died. I couldn't believe it. I was devastated." Kezia said.
The mum-of-two, now 44, buried her head in the sand and threw herself into work. "Not telling people was my way of coping. I thought - if I didn't tell them, the MS didn't exist. I didn't tell clients, I didn't tell most of my friends – I just carried on," she said. "I was doing injections and managing pain behind closed doors, but I kept up appearances. I had a theatre degree, and I guess I really used it. I got good at pretending I was fine.
"I had a retractable stick that I would hide in a shopping bag in town. If I bumped into someone I knew, I would just lean against the wall. I didn't want my clients to know - so I would pretend I had cramp or something."
Diagnosed in May 2007, aged just 25 and with a small child at home, Kezia says her instinct was to keep going no matter what. "I thought I could manage it myself. I'd work, look after my son, and then collapse in a heap afterwards. I didn't want people to see me as weak."
But Kezia's condition worsened and by 2018 she was exhausted, struggled to walk with two sticks and the NHS had said there was nothing more they could do for her. Seeing a future in a wheelchair was inevitable, she tried one last ditch attempt; stem cell therapy in Russia.
But it cost £38,000 and as a single mother, the cash wasn't available. It wasn't until a friend bluntly told her she'd need to go public to crowdfund the cash that things began to change. "She said, 'If you need money, people need to know what you're going through'. So I started telling people and posting online, and I was blown away – I had donations coming in from all over the world. I was so lucky."
In 2019, she flew to Moscow for HSCT (haematopoietic stem cell transplantation), a treatment hard to find on the NHS. "It involved chemotherapy and isolation – it was brutal – but it gave me hope. I started to feel my energy coming back. The fatigue dropped off. I could cook again, and my kids even said my food tasted better," she said.
Since then, Kezia has stayed well, managing her condition carefully, using what's known as 'spoon theory' to ration her energy into measured amounts. "I only have a limited number of spoons a day – so if I go food shopping, I don't see clients. It's all about balancing things."
One unlikely source of relief has been oxygen therapy. "It's a hyperbaric chamber at the MS Therapy Centre in Leicestershire. You sit with a mask on and breathe pure oxygen," she explains. "I didn't think it was doing much until I went away for two weeks and couldn't access it – I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. The difference was incredible."
She uses the centre every week, and she says it has been life-changing. Today, Kezia uses a walking stick, a scooter, or a wheelchair depending on the situation – but she doesn't let the condition stop her. "I used to be very anti-driving, now I drive everywhere. I plan ahead. I still get tired, but I'm living again."
Kezia now takes on as many adventures as she can to ensure she is making the most of life. "One of my best friends once said, 'I'm glad you got MS,' and I thought that was an awful thing to say. But she meant it's made us do more. We've gone parasailing, we've slept under the blue whale at the Natural History Museum, we've been to paint parties in Magaluf."
She added: "People think I'm drunk when I can't walk – but it's just because I've been dancing too hard." Now, she says, life is too precious to waste. 'People moan about getting older – but I love birthdays. That's more time to do fun stuff. People say I'm always on holiday – well, yes, because I love it.
"MS a pain in the bum – but it's also a blessing. I don't take anything for granted. I do as much as I can. And I stay positive – because if you keep your head up, the ride is a lot easier."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Suman Fernando obituary
My friend and colleague Suman Fernando, who has died aged 92, had an international reputation in the field of critical psychiatry, particularly in relation to advocating for race equity in mental health. As well as being a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS for more than 20 years, Suman wrote 14 books and many articles in which he consistently and methodically challenged institutional racism in British mental health provision. In his first book, Race and Culture in Society (1988), he explored the role that race and culture play in how people experience mental health issues and services. In his breakthrough 1991 book, Mental Health, Race and Culture, he challenged the dominance and singularity of the medical model, and argued that any service response for minority communities should also focus on social, cultural and institutional issues. Suman often juxtaposed the western, individualised notion of mental illness with those of the global south or indigenous healing systems that see fragmentation of community cohesion as causal, with responses that are more spiritual and community-based. It is worth noting that the relatively recent inclusion of practices such as mindfulness and yoga into mental health recovery in the west are precisely those that have underpinned indigenous models for centuries. Born in Colombo in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Suman was the son of Charles, a doctor, and his wife, Esme (nee De Mel). He attended Royal college in Colombo, then followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had both studied medicine in the UK. Studying at Cambridge University and University College hospital in London, he qualified in 1958. After briefly returning to Ceylon to work in its only psychiatric hospital, on the outskirts of Colombo, he returned in 1960 to the UK, where the following year he married Frances Lefford, whom he had first met when they were students at University College hospital. Working as an NHS psychiatrist at Chase Farm hospital in Enfield, north London, he became a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the early 1970s, and in 1975 received an MD from the University of Cambridge based on his studies in transcultural psychiatry. He retired in 1997. Suman remained deeply connected to his Sri Lankan heritage and supported many institutions and projects in the country, in particular the People's Rural Development Association, which he played a key role in establishing in 2007. He was also a partner in the Trauma and Global Health programme organised by McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which brought valuable mental health training to Sri Lanka. I first met Suman in Sri Lanka in the 90s, where we were both undertaking voluntary work. He was a kind, warm, humble and generous person who made time for everyone. He is survived by Frances, his daughter, Siri, two grandsons, Nathan and Alec, his brother Sunimal and sister Susila.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
AMANDA PLATELL: It's not MY fault you're fat... so why should I pay for it?
Though the NHS is in crisis, with 7.4 million people still languishing on the waiting list for appointments and treatment, we are now told that fat-busting drugs such as Mounjaro will soon be as widely available as statins from your doctor, as accessible as a packet of Smarties for the overweight. Jolly good, but since nearly a third of the adult population are now considered obese there's one very big elephant in the room: the question of how much this will cost us taxpayers who do not happen to be fat.
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
Women's Prize winner slams ‘unbelievable' NHS doctor unemployment
Rachel Clarke, author and palliative care doctor, won the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction for her fourth book, 'The Story of a Heart.' Clarke has urged Health Secretary Wes Streeting to address the potential unemployment of resident doctors due to a shortage of training posts, with approximately 20,000 doctors expected to miss out on specialty training this summer. Clarke highlighted the absurdity of doctors being unemployed or seeking alternative work like Uber shifts when the NHS desperately needs them. Clarke referenced a Medical Defence Union (MDU) survey revealing that over a third of working NHS doctors feel their ability to treat patients is impaired due to exhaustion from staff shortages and long hours. Dutch author Yael van der Wouden won the Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, 'The Safekeep,' which explores themes of displacement and generational trauma.
