"I was 10 years old the first time my dad fell in front of me".

I was 10 years old the first time my dad fell in front of me.

He fell hard. So hard that he had cuts on his hands and knees, with blood running from them.

At the time, dad was my netball coach, and being just as stubborn as me, he refused to stop officiating at netball training to clean his legs.

Instead, he finished all the drills and ignored my own and eight other girl’s scrunched up noses and various exclamations of “ewww” as we looked at all the quickly drying blood on his legs and arms.

But even though he continued the training, dad knew something wasn’t right. At this point in his life, my dad was nimble, he was fit, he was an ex-VFL player, a PE teacher and only 48-years-old…. And he had tripped far too easily.

Fast forward through a series of doctor’s appointments and scary days of waiting and we soon learned that dad had Multiple Sclerosis, or MS.

I could count the things I knew about MS using only one finger, before my dad was diagnosed. Once a year my school read a lot of books to raise money for the MS read-a-thon. This is where my knowledge stopped.

Thirteen years on and of course, I now know a lot more.

I know my dad has Primary Progressive, or “the good kind” of MS, as he jokes.

I know that his condition may slowly deteriorate. I know that one day, out of nowhere, it may level off, or even improve.

And I also know that one day, he could be in a wheelchair.

Luckily for me and my family, my dad’s attitude to this disease is simply incredible. He is forever positive. But this doesn’t detract from the difficulties MS has resulted in for my dad.

A lot of the symptoms of MS are vague and common. Numbness, dizziness, poor balance, pins and needles. They are also, for the most part, invisible.

This is why, for a long time, no one knew why my dad had a disabled parking spot awarded to him.

And we all noticed the dirty looks thrown in our direction when my family parked and were all able to walk away from the car; seemingly quite competently.

Those dirty glances and that deficit of awareness is why MS Australia has launched the Seeing MS campaign.

The concept was formed by MS sufferer Lyn Petruccelli who witnessed first-hand the discrimination that people with MS experience. She decided to create a visible representation of the symptoms.

The video that the campaign has launched is incredibly beautiful and, from the conversations I’ve had with my dad, incredibly accurate. It made me cry from sadness at the constant battles my dad faces, and happiness that finally I could better understand them.

Please take the time to watch it yourself:

Today is world MS day. Today MS is nationally recognised.

Today we see my dad’s numb hands and heavy legs; today we take a moment to try and understand just a little bit better.

Here are the photos that this campaign has created:

You can directly donate to MS research at www.ms.org.au or take part in the MS walk and fun run on the 1st of June in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.