Bellarine Community Health unites for colleague in MS fundraiser

BELLARINE Community Health (BCH) has smashed its fundraising goal in this year’s May 50K challenge, rallying behind a colleague diagnosed with multiple sclerosis to raise vital funds for research and support.

Staff at the specialist healthcare service participated in the annual challenge through the month of May, walking or running at least 50km and raising more than $13,000 for the cause, obliterating their modest fundraising goal of $3,000.

This effort has seen BCH achieve the third highest fundraising total in this year’s challenge of any organisation across the country.

For the organisation, its participation was personal, after team member Kate McLean was diagnosed with MS last year after suffering years of chronic migraines, headaches and fatigue – symptoms she put down to being a busy working mother of three teenagers.

Ms McLean said she was “blown away” by the “overwhelming support” she had received from her colleagues at BCH and the broader community since she revealed her diagnosis last month.

There is no known cure for MS, and it typically strikes young people in the prime of their lives, with the average age of diagnosis being 30 years old.

“Having Bellarine Community Health get behind me and be supported so well by people who didn’t even know me personally, it’s just so lovely – people are just so lovely. It’s restored my faith in humanity,” Ms McLean said.

“MS is very much an invisible illness… and I think the thing I’d like people to know is that MS does still exist but it’s not as scary as it used to be.

 

 

“There are so many options available to an MS patient now. It doesn’t cure the disease, it doesn’t stop it, but it slows the progression.

“It does all come down to the dollars, the dollars that can go into research…but there’s hope out there. Because of this research, we’re living longer and healthier lives.”

BCH chief executive Kathy Russell said it was incredibly brave of Kate to share her story.

“We are so pleased to have been able to show her support in this way,” Ms Russell said.

“I would personally like to thank the many staff who took part in fundraising efforts in support not only of Kate, but to fund life-changing research into the prevention and hopefully cure for multiple sclerosis.”

Ms McLean said the decision to reveal her diagnosis was made with the encouragement of her family and had already helped to spark conversations across the community, particularly within her daughters’ school community, and had provided a boost in support she “did not know was out there”.

“It was the best decision I’ve ever made. Just to have people aware, to spark those conversations, but also the support that they’ve been able to provide, not only to me, but my family,” she said.

“I think with any chronic illness, people tend to keep these things to themselves… No one knows what people are going through unless they share it, so I would encourage anyone who’s umming and ahing with that decision to share it, to put it out there and make people talk about it.

“It’s absolutely worthwhile taking that jump and sharing what you’re going through.”