A bride has told how her horror hangover turned out to be a sign of MS.
Emily McColgan-Upfold, from Northern Ireland, struggled to bend over the day after her hen party in March 2023.
Understandably, she assumed she had experienced nothing but a few aches and pains from the night before.
But in the weeks and months that followed, the 30-year-old’s strength, balance, vision, hearing and speech rapidly deteriorated.
Ms McColgan-Upfold, who works in education, demanded answers about the cause of her bizarre symptoms and sought medical help.
Emily McColgan-Upfold, from Northern Ireland, had difficulty bending over the day after her hen party in March 2023
Just three days before she was set to marry her partner of 11 years, concerned medics rushed her in for an emergency MRI in May.
This left the bride-to-be’s wedding day in tatters as she nervously waited for the results.
Her wedding to Stephen went ahead as planned, although Mrs McColgan-Upfold was ‘afraid of falling’ and ‘couldn’t really walk steadily’.
Her results, which told her she had MS, came just days after she tied the knot, as she stood at the airport to fly to Greece on her honeymoon.
Recalling the moment, Ms McColgan-Upfold told MailOnline: ‘I cried and completely broke down.
‘I’m sure people were looking at me, but it was as if time and space ceased to exist.
‘They told me I had more lesions in my brain and spinal cord and demyelination, which was most likely MS.
“I felt like my whole world had just collapsed.”
MS is a neurological condition that affects the brain and spinal cord and causes a wide range of possible symptoms, including the problems Ms McColgan-Upfold had before her diagnosis.
In MS, the immune system goes haywire and mistakenly attacks the myelin sheath in the brain and spinal cord.
The NHS advice page says: ‘This is the layer that surrounds your nerves, protecting them and allowing electrical signals to travel from the brain to the rest of the body.
‘During attacks, the myelin sheath becomes inflamed in small pieces, which can be seen on an MRI scan.
‘These areas of inflammation can disrupt the messages traveling along the nerves. It can slow them down, confuse them, send them in the wrong direction or prevent them from getting through at all.”
Even before the diagnosis, worrying symptoms tainted what should have been one of the happiest days of Ms McColgan-Upfold’s life.
“Our wedding day was supposed to be such a special, happy day, but there was such an ominous gray cloud hanging over it,” she said.
‘I thought I would be more excited and dizzy with nerves, but instead I was very conscious of not giving away that I was in pain and exhausted.
‘I had severe muscle weakness because of the numbness, so I was afraid of falling and I had trouble putting on my dress, so my mother had to help me.
‘I couldn’t really walk steadily or hold anything too heavy in my left hand, I suffered from occasional migraines and dizziness and had constant back, hip and leg pain; and I struggled with my hearing and sight.”
Ms McColgan-Upfold said the ordeal now has her looking back on her big day with “mixed feelings”.
“I wish I could have felt the way I thought I would feel, and I feel sad for the girl who was afraid of what was to come,” she said.
Determined to enjoy her honeymoon in Greece, Mrs McColgan-Upfold waited until she got home before undergoing further tests to decide on her treatment options.
Although she expected to start treatment for MS soon, Ms McColgan-Upfold has also made lifestyle changes to ease the pain caused by the condition, such as cold water swimming and ice baths.
She has also started one Instagram account to document the highs and lows of her journey.
“If you had asked me six months ago what my future would look like, I would have said I was bedridden or in a wheelchair, with no hopes or dreams,” she said.
‘An MS diagnosis brings with it a lot of uncertainty. I will never know if I will relapse again or if my disease will worsen, but I have learned that we don’t have to worry about things we have no control over.
Understandably, she assumed she had experienced nothing but a few aches and pains from the night before
‘Yes, it may take a little longer, sometimes the house is no longer as tidy as it used to be, but living with MS is just that, living.’
Mrs McColgan-Upfold still manages to enjoy life, despite occasionally struggling with activities she used to do without thinking.
“There are of course times when I feel sad, especially when there are things that I used to be able to do easily that are now difficult, like putting on my shoes, opening bottles and jars, cooking or preparing a meal and cleaning my house,” said she.
‘But I choose every day to wake up and fight back against MS and do things that make me happy. The future is hopeful for me.’
Ms McColgan-Upfold said she is hopeful that research will help MS patients in the future and plans to help raise awareness of people with the disease.
“I want to continue raising awareness about MS and building a community of chronic disease warriors who support and support each other through good and difficult times,” she said.
‘When I was first diagnosed I went straight to Google and the images of elderly people in wheelchairs, the horror stories of falls and choking, and discovering the average lifespan of 40 years after diagnosis put me in a dark place where I gave up.
“But if you look closely, you’ll discover that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of MS warriors online who choose to find joy every day, choose to fight back against the stigma, and choose to persevere despite all odds .
‘They helped me realize that MS doesn’t have to be as bad as a Google search tells you. We did not choose to get MS, but we can choose how we respond to it.’
But just three days after tying the knot, while at the airport shopping for sunscreen for her honeymoon, she was given the devastating diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.
Ms McColgan-Upfold hopes other people diagnosed with MS will keep in mind that this is not the end.
“For people who have MS or have recently been diagnosed with MS, I would like them to know that MS is of course a life-changing diagnosis, but it does not have to be life-ending,” she said.
“It certainly doesn’t have to be the end of your hopes and dreams.”
Scientists are still trying to figure out what exactly causes MS.
It is currently suspected to be caused by a combination of genetics and an external factor or factors.
Theories include a lack of vitamin D, exposure to smoking, teenage obesity and a result of viral infections.
For reasons experts don’t yet understand, women are two to three times more likely to develop MS than men.
MS usually occurs in people between the ages of 20 and 40, although the disease can occur at any age.
There is no cure and treatments instead focus on controlling and relieving the numerous symptoms of MS and slowing its progression, if this is possible.
Treatment depends on the type of MS a patient has.
Relapsing-remitting MS is the most common type, accounting for 8 to 9 in 10 cases.
Someone with this type of MS may have episodes in which new or worsening MS symptoms return intermittently. Periods between relapses, which can last years in some cases, are called remission.
The other type of MS is called primary progressive. With this type, there are no relapses or periods of remission; the symptoms only get worse.
People with relapsing-remitting MS can also develop the progressive form of the condition, which is called secondary progressive MS.
Specific MS treatments, which include both medications and therapies, vary by individual depending on their symptoms and the specific nature of their condition.
Drugs designed to reduce the frequency or severity of relapses and possibly slow the progression of MS are divided into two broad types.
First-line treatments are treatments that are generally less effective, but have fewer, potentially disabling, side effects.
Second-line treatments are the opposite, more effective but with a greater risk of powerful side effects.
These treatments are usually only given to people with relapsing-remitting MS, as they usually do not benefit people with the progressive form who still suffer from side effects anyway.
According to the charity MS Society UK, an estimated 130,000 people in Britain have MS, with 7,000 people diagnosed each year.
It is believed that approximately 1 million Americans also have MS.
