MS & Me

In the previous post Joan explained the process of getting the VAT & VRT back when you have a Primary Medical Certificate. I have been a disabled driver for a long time, back when I had Relapsing Remitting MS. Now my illness has progressed and I have had to consider the impact of worsening disability when purchasing a new car.

This blog is a guide for anybody who has been granted the Primary Medical Certificate by the HSE and wants to avail of the Tax Relief Scheme. It details the steps I took to get a Revenue Exemption and buy an adapted vehicle.

I got my Primary Medical Certificate in November 2021. I’m not saying this is the only way, but it worked for me. It took me about two months to complete the process. First of all, take a few copies of your certificate and keep them somewhere safe. It’s a very valuable document! Next, you should read this article about tax relief for drivers with disabilities on the Citizen’s Information site.

Lockdown and Covid have changed me forever.

For the past 10 years or so I have been keeping a similar routine. I'd get up in the morning, have a cup of tea, breakfast and get on with my day. My schedule would be all about spending time with people. It would be getting children ready for school or creche, chats with the coffee guy at my station, watching the bleary-eyed strangers on the train or the lovely woman who always graced the pavement past me on the street when I walked to work.  There’d then be the banter with work colleagues as we got on with the tasks at hand.

There are the parts of Christmas I love, like time with family, winter walks, twinkling lights and evenings by a cosy fire. But the parts I like don’t always gel well with my MS. As a result, Christmas can turn into something of a marathon for me and excitement tends to quickly give way to dread when I realise there is no way my body will cope with all the festivities.

There are the parts of Christmas I love, like time with family, winter walks, twinkling lights and evenings by a cosy fire. But the parts I like don’t always gel well with my MS. As a result, Christmas can turn into something of a marathon for me and excitement tends to quickly give way to dread when I realise there is no way my body will cope with all the festivities.

For the second part in our look back series , this week we are looking back on the MS and Me blog posts from July to December 2021.

As the year draws to an end, we are looking back over some of the blogs written by MS and Me bloggers during 2021.

We’d like to say thank you to everyone who reads and shares the blog posts and to those of you who send messages and write comments.

Writing a blog piece can be a challenge; sometimes it is difficult to share our experiences. We hope that our words are relatable to other people with MS. We also hope we help people without MS understand more about the condition and that we give a snapshot of what life with MS is like in Ireland. 

December 10th is the annual Christmas Jumper Day for MS Ireland. The past two years have been hard for all of us living with the pandemic. As the world shut down in 2020, it was such a surreal experience for everyone. Thankfully this year the world has somewhat reopened. Hopefully next year we can say Covid is a thing of the past. With everything moving online due to social distancing, so many charities have lost out on fundraising.

There is a fear of disability ingrained in many of us from a young age. Being disabled or sick is seen as abnormal. Those of us with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) often deny ourselves the joy of participating for fear of being stigmatised. Disability has typically been something to hide as it makes others uncomfortable. Since some MS symptoms are invisible many people choose to conceal their disease as they worry about being treated differently or being isolated. This is further perpetuated by ‘masking’- passing as ‘non-disabled’. Invisible MS is more ‘palatable’ to the ableist world we navigate, which is perhaps why stigma is still so rife.

I’ve just heard a Christmas ad on the radio. I’m sitting at the work-from-home space I’ve carved out in the corner of the sitting room, inside invisible boundary between my working day and evening routine. The sound of the Christmassy jingle startles me and I mutter that it’s a bit early for it, isn’t it?