JK Rowling stopped me in street to tell me I had MS (before I’d been diagnosed)
Writer spotted condition that killed her mum
AS she struggled, exhausted, with a baby buggy, Helen Fowler saw a woman on the street – who looked vaguely familiar – smiling at her sympathetically and they exchanged a few friendly words.
The stranger had noticed the young mother stumbling, and asked if she was suffering from multiple sclerosis.
The woman was actually Harry Potter author JK Rowling, and she had correctly spotted Mrs Fowler was showing symptoms of MS – eight years before doctors diagnosed the debilitating condition.
Mrs Fowler said she wished she had spoken to her doctor at the time, as early treatment could have slowed her MS.
Recalling her encounter with Miss Rowling on an Edinburgh street in 2006, she said: ‘I was exhausted at the time. People talk to you when there’s a baby in the buggy in a way you normally wouldn’t speak to strangers on the street, but I remember that there was this lady outside a shop in Morningside and she smiled at us.
‘She seemed to understand that being with a new baby is knackering, but I could tell from the way she looked sympathetic that she was a mum too. I was having a bit of a moan about being exhausted,’ the 51-year-old added.
‘She must have picked up on the way I was walking because her mother had suffered from the condition, and she asked me if I had MS.
‘I had a mild stumble and I used the pram for support. She maybe thought that was why I was speaking to her and I was just shocked. But she was bang on the mark unfortunately.’
It was the first time that anyone had mentioned MS to Mrs Fowler.
Miss Rowling’s mother Anne died of complications related to MS in 1990, aged 45. The author founded a £10million clinic in her mother’s name at the University of Edinburgh dedicated to researching the condition.
This month, she announced a further £15.3million to create new facilities and support further research at the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic.
Mrs Fowler, a health writer and MS campaigner, was finally diagnosed in 2014, after she went blind in one eye and is now a patient at the clinic.
The condition causes the immune system to attack the nerves by mistake, causing problems such as blurred vision, loss of balance, spasms or tremors. Other symptoms can include fatigue, pain, problems with memory and difficulty swallowing.
Diagnosis is difficult because the condition is complex. Treatments include disease-modifying therapies which can slow down the progression of the condition, but there is currently no cure.
‘MS is tricky for doctors to diagnose,’ Mrs Fowler added.
‘But there was obviously something wrong then and she (Miss Rowling) hit the nail on the head. She knew the signs because her mother had the most severe form of it. I wasn’t diagnosed until 2014, but I often think that had it been caught sooner, the illness wouldn’t have caught up and I wouldn’t be in as bad a way as I am now.’
The mother of two added: ‘I’m very grateful to JK Rowling for helping and supporting us MS patients. She is our champion. Thanks to her, an end to the suffering caused by MS is edging into sight.’
MS Society Scotland director Morna Simpkins said: ‘MS is an unpredictable, fluctuating condition and the symptoms vary massively.
‘This could be issues with balance, vision, pain or fatigue to name just a few.
‘Because these sometimes come and go it can be hard to identify MS. Someone who has been through the MS journey – either themselves or with a relative – may spot a pattern of seemingly unrelated symptoms.’
‘She was bang on the mark’