Maria Caruana De Brincat wants to raise awareness about multiple sclerosis. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Six years ago, Maria Caruana De Brincat had to accept that her medical condition was interfering with her performance at work and took the tough decision to get boarded out.

As a person with multiple sclerosis – a degenerative disease that attacks the central nervous system – she realised she could no longer continue working as a nurse.

“I couldn’t cope with the 12-hour shifts. When I had a bad day I’d drag my feet along the hospital corridors, I had slurred speech and trembled as I gave an injection,” the 34-year-old says.

Leaving was not easy as she had to walk away from colleagues and the career she had worked so hard towards.

“I felt depressed, like I was no longer good. It’s hard to once be part of a team and then you’re just cut off,” she says, adding that, as well as the psychological struggle, she suffered financially.

She suddenly had to make do with less than a third of her previous salary as the invalidity pension amounts to about half the minimum wage.

It’s hard to once be part of a team and then you’re just cut off

Ms Caruana De Brincat is lucky enough to have a husband and family who support her.

“The pension is extremely low and we get by thanks to our united family… thankfully my medicines and treatment are provided for free by the State but we struggle with high electricity bills. I’m in this situation and I feel things are tight, let alone others who are living off only this income,” she says.

Due to her condition she has to keep her home’s air conditioning system on most of the time, since hot temperatures lead to relapses due to a rise in body temperature.

She had applied for reduced energy rates in 2010 but her request was turned down twice on the grounds that her family did not include a member who suffered from a medical condition that required excessive use of energy.

Ms Caruana De Brincat feels this indicates that the authorities do not really understand what MS is. Another example of this was her nine-year battle to get a reserved parking spot outside her house.

Questions sent to the Social Solidarity Ministry were not replied by the time of writing.

MS affects the central nervous system by impairing the function of the brain and spinal cord to send messages to the rest of the body.

Patients can delay its progression using treatment and medication.

Ms Caruana De Brincat was diagnosed with MS when she was 23. The symptoms started when she was a nursing student: tinnitus (ringing in the ears), blurred vision, fatigue and numbness in her legs.

She is married to a supportive husband with whom she has two children: nine-year-old Jade and seven-year-old Jon.

Now a full-time mother, she learnt to work with the symptoms and relapses. Since she knows she cannot function in the heat, she takes her children to the beach at 6am.

“When we are leaving the beach before 10am, other bathers are just arriving,” she says.

There are days when she is too weak to do anything but then there are times when she feels healthy enough to go out and fulfil basic mundane activities.

“People see me at my best. Sometimes people look at me and think: ‘I don’t know why you are making such a big deal?’ What they don’t realise is that MS is a rollercoaster,” she says.

She is on a mission to raise awareness about MS through the Facebook page entitled Multiple Sclerosis Malta and dreams of embarking on a full scale campaign in the very near future.