Former Diageo colleagues of Lauren Dickie, affected by multiple sclerosis, organise fundraisers to help her get treatment in Mexico

Mother-of-one Lauren Dickie, 34, was diagnosed with MS when she was 21 and is hoping to undergo experimental treatment in Mexico to allow her to spend some quality time with her young daughter Charlotte.

Lauren will need to raise as much as £56,000 before she can go ahead with the hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). Her former colleagues at Diageo in Menstrie are aiming to help her raise 10 per cent of the costs and are organising a series of events, including one in Alloa.

There will be a Psychic Night at the Station Bar at 7.30pm on April 29. Local Psychic Denise will be hosting the event at no cost, she is doing a full floor show as well as healings afterwards. The Station Bar also kindly offered its function room and refreshments free of charge to support the event.

Psychic Denise will host the event for free

Rhona Ferrans, an employee at Diageo's technical centre in Menstrie, is currently working with Lauren's husband Jonathan.

She explained to the Advertiser: “There are days when she can't see, there are days when she can't walk. There's no cure for what she has.

“Her daughter is five - she wants to have the energy to have a good quality of life with her.”

The treatment uses low-dose chemotherapy to temp the patient's immune system down. Then, doctors use HSCT therapy, involving an infusion of the patient's own stem cells, to reboot their immune system.

Research suggests that two years post-transplant, half of the patients showed a marked improvement in disability.

Rhona continued: “To undertake that treatment she's going to have to travel to Mexico and she needs to raise £56,000.

“Her husband works for me currently, but she used to work for us. Her former colleagues at Diageo decided we want to try and raise ten per cent of that for her.”

On her Go Fund Me page, Lauren said: “ After 14 years, I feel I am now running out of time and need to take my health and recovery into my own hands.

“The treatment is ineffective over a certain amount of disease progression and the trials in the UK will not be progressed in time to help my case. This is the best chance of recovery and leading a normal life I have, but I need to face the fact that I may not be accepted on this NHS treatment program and I have made the decision, along with thousands of other MS sufferers, to seek the treatment privately in the UK or globally.

“The treatment, in centres abroad, is further advanced than in the UK, having treated hundreds of patients from all over the world, with all types of MS and have seen remarkable results. The treatment is called autologous hematopoietic stem cell therapy (HSCT).

“It’s very aggressive and uses chemotherapy to kill off my existing immune system and rebuild it using my own stem cells to reboot my immune system to a point before the disease took hold.”

Over the years, she experienced acute periods of relapses such as waking up blind in one eye and being unable to walk as well as severe dizziness, which causes her constant sickness for days.

She continued: “It’s not been easy. As the years passed, these relapses stopped due to treatment available for Relapsing Remitting MS called Interferon Beta 1A and I was told that my MS was likely to take a benign path and I guessed I was one of the lucky few to have no symptoms.

“I now have a beautiful, happy daughter, who is the light of my life, but following her birth in 2010, I noticed slight difficulties in walking and waved goodbye to my last pair of heels.

“Over the last two years my mobility has gone downhill steeply and I now have balance issues causing me to have to use an elbow crutch for balance and support due to fatigable weakness in my legs.

“I also wear ankle supports to stop my ankles giving way under me, this is along with unbearable fatigue and innumerable other symptoms I have to overcome daily.”

Tickets for the Psychic Night are £10 and are available from Rhona. Call her on 07803 855 597 to get yours, all proceeds will go to support Lauren.

There will also be a Frizz Night - a mechanical frog race mixed with a quiz at the end of May, probably in Bridge of Allan, details to be confirmed later.

The team is also organising a bottle auction, colleagues donated limited edition whiskies and spirits, which will be sold for charity later. Call Rhona if you are interested in the event or if you'd like to donate a bottle.