Hi my name is Jackson Ruakere, I’m 30 years old, a plumber and gasfitter by trade and like to consider myself very fit and active. I have a passion for watersports and the outdoors, especially freestyle jet-skiing.
Throughout 2023 I had been experiencing pins and needles and numbness in my hands and legs. I went to physios and osteopaths seeking help and answers. I eventually saw my doctor who referred me to the neurology department in Palmerston North. There was a three month wait to be seen.
While I was waiting, I tried to improve my health any way I could. I did a lot of research into boosting my immune system and found some supplements which would help me achieve this. I came across turkey tail mushroom which has some incredible properties which claim to strengthen your immune system, reduce inflammation and potentially help fight cancer. It sounded like the best thing I could try. I would later learn, however, that it was actually making things much worse. I spiralled into a hole of serious health problems. I had numbness in my face, loss of taste, hearing loss, and worst of all was severe vertigo. I was bed ridden for a month, not able to sit up or walk without getting motion sickness.
My GP tried to push me up the queue in the health system but the wait only got longer. Once they told me I had to wait 8 months, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and go private. I was very lucky to have health insurance – I was able to get a scan within days. It showed I had lesions in my brain and on my spinal cord. My GP prepared me for the most likely outcome: he asked me if I knew about multiple sclerosis. I knew a small amount about it but you never consider these things happening to yourself.
Finding out you have a life long illness isn’t easy, especially because you don’t really know what’s ahead.
I felt ok with it until I sat in the car with my sister and said it out loud to her. A wave of uncertainty washed over me as I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to do the things I love again, can I go back to jet skiing? I wondered whether I could return to the job I love, would I even be able to earn money again? Would I hold my girlfriend back from the life we had planned? And would she still want the life we could now be in for? All I wanted to do was find out as much as I could about this disease. I jumped online after being advised not to and found a lot of scary things but also a lot of positive information.
A large portion of people can live a very normal life with it and I’m pretty determined to live a good life.
A few months passed and I finally got a confirmed diagnosis. After the long wait, I actually felt relieved with the news. I had an answer to all of the strange things happening to me. It can be hard to find out that you have a life long illness, but I’m very fortunate to have a lot of support around me. My loving partner and my mum were right by my side and proactive with helping me find out more about it. My mum has actually told me that she also felt relieved to find out that it’s multiple sclerosis:
A lot of worse things had crossed my mind, but this we can work with.
All of my friends and family have been amazing support and I’ve been very lucky in many ways. Unfortunately for most people in NZ, the health system is broken. There aren’t enough specialists. I was told that everyone gets put on the urgent list, otherwise they won’t be seen. But for me, I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford health insurance which has sped up my journey massively.
When I was diagnosed, they presented me with four options of treatment. They don’t tell me which ones are better, they just handed me a bunch of pamphlets and told me to do some research. You can imagine how difficult it is to choose the correct medication when you aren’t a neuro scientist. I feel extremely lucky as I have a good friend that was doing her PHD in treatment for multiple sclerosis. She ran through how things worked and gave me her opinion on the medications. Without that I wouldn’t have chosen Ocrelizumab, a drug that only takes half a day in the hospital once every 6 months.
Between this drug and some lifestyle changes, I have managed to take control of my body again and carry on living a normal life.
Outside of medication, four things are very important for me to reduce inflammation. Diet, exercise, sleep and most of all stress. I tried a lot of diets and in the end, cutting out processed and fatty foods has been the only thing that has made a big difference. Cardio is the next thing, it gets your blood flowing, reduces inflammation and helps regulate my moods and stress levels. I notice more inflammation in the mornings if I have a late night. Stress is the most difficult thing to control, especially when you’ve just been diagnosed with an illness but it’s the most important one. I went on a ten day trip down south and forgot about all of my problems back home big and small. By the end of that trip, almost all of my symptoms were gone.
Normal life for me at the moment is being able to work full time, I go to the gym most mornings before work, I get to spend my weekends with friends and family, getting out for hikes and going on trips around the country jet skiing. With jet skiing I get to see places I would have never seen otherwise, I meet amazing like-minded people and I get a huge amount of adrenaline and excitement which gives me something to work towards.
If I’ve learnt anything throughout this journey, it’s that it’s very important to let yourself lean on other people and let them help you. You can’t shut off and ignore it, you have to learn to live with it instead of against it. The way I see it, now is the best time there’s ever been to get this diagnosis as treatments are very successful and new research is incredibly positive! I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.
Written by Jackson Ruakere and Louise Mckinlay