SUZANNE was 30 years old, a newlywed with a six-week-old baby boy, when she started feeling a tingling sensation down her arm.

Before long, she had constant pins and needles, was unable to pick up a cup or cradle her son, and she knew she had to find out what was going on.

“My GP told me I might have carpel tunnel syndrome, but when my results came back she told me I had MS. I just said, WHAT?”, she tells news.com.au. “I was newly married, I had a little baby, a mortgage, the wheels just came off.

“I went on medication, but went downhill very quickly. Within 12 months I had 4 attacks which lasted for 6 to 8 weeks at a time. My husband had to give up work, we had to sell our house, we moved in with my mum who was then diagnosed with breast cancer. The first 12 months of little bubba’s life was pretty hellish.”

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease of the central nervous system which sees the brain and the spinal cord attacked by the body’s own immune system. Symptoms and severity differ from person to person, but include things like memory loss, loss of balance, poor coordination, blurring or loss of vision, slurred speech, numbness or tingling in limbs, extreme fatigue, bladder problems and loss of mobility. Seventy-five per cent of people living with the disease are women, and diagnosis in your thirties — like Suzanne — is common.

“The next attack I had affected my eyesight, and over a period of a few days I developed constant double vision and I went deaf in one ear. That lasted for eight weeks,” Suzanne explains.

“Another attack, I felt nauseous all the time, I looked like I was permanently drunk, I couldn't walk straight, I ran into walls, I had no balance at all.

“It was incredibly fortunate that my mother at the time was working with a lady who knew a doctor doing a clinical trial for MS, Dr Simon Broadley. I went and saw him and he said I was the perfect candidate to give the trial — a therapy called Lemtrada — a go.

“He advised me of the risks, and I spoke about it with my existing neurologist, who actually advised against it. But you know what, we had nothing to lose. I was getting sicker by the month. My medication wasn’t working. The prognosis wasn’t looking good. So we embarked on Lemtrada.”

Lemtrada is a treatment for people living with relapsing-remitting MS, administered intravenously and designed to reset your immune system “so that it may reduce the impact of the disease on the central nervous system.”

Suzanne was one of nearly 1,500 patients across the world to participate in the clinical trial. She spent four to six hours a day over five days on an IV drip as a hospital outpatient in 2008. A year later, she spent another three days doing the same thing.

“I’m not going to lie, it knocks the stuffing out of you,” she says. “It knocks out your immune system and helps your body regrow a new one without the nasties, hopefully. But, the side effects were manageable. I’ve had no attacks since 2008, and have been on no medication since 2009. It’s wonderful.”

The clinical trial found that Lemtrada not only slowed the progression of physical disability in people with relapsing forms of MS, but decreased the number of relapses. Success stories like this mean that Lemtrada will now be available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from April 1, 2015. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended Lemtrada for PBS listing in November 2014, and the treatment passed final approval yesterday and will be available for prescription for individuals with relapsing-remitting MS who meet specific criteria.

“Clinical trials are a wonderful thing,” says Suzanne, who is currently 18 weeks pregnant with her second child.

“I had a friend who was diagnosed with MS a year after me but she was too late to get into this trial. She’s been struggling for seven years now. She had to sell her house, downsize, move in with her mum. Her doctor desperately wanted to put her on Lemtrada, and now she can. Now it’s on the PBS, she can give it a go.

“Lemtrada doesn’t cure the existing damage but it stops any more from happening, which is incredibly important. So I still have no short term memory and my concentration is a bit cactus, and I get pins and needles when I get very very tired, but it’s just pins and needles. I don’t get that weakness or the inability to hold onto anything or the attacks. I know Lemtrada works for me. It’s an incredibly wonderful thing.”

Dr Matthew Miles, MS Research Australia’s CEO, also welcomed the news that Lemtrada is available on the PBS.

“MS research and development has come a long way in the past decade. MS is a chronic, unpredictable disease which affects patients in many different ways and thus requires a tailored treatment approach. To have an additional treatment option, such as Lemtrada, available on the PBS is great news for Australians living with MS,” he said in a statement.

For more information about Lemtrada visit MS Research Australia or speak to your neurologist to see whether it could be a suitable treatment option for you.