Memory of her beloved husband spurs severe MS sufferer to skydive

But when cancer stole her childhood sweetheart away last year, Julie Zerebecki lost part of herself all over again.

“I was just getting my life back when Dave was diagnosed with cancer,” the mother-of-two says with emotion.

“I had finally got used to the idea of a future being like this, but not without Dave. He helped me cope with MS. He was my life.

“Sometimes I ask him, ‘Why did you have to go and leave me?’ It’s selfish but that’s how I feel.”

In 2003, Julie grew unsteady on her feet, tripping incessantly and without warning.

It would take another six years for doctors to finally suspect and test her for multiple sclerosis.

By the time the diagnosis was made, Julie had resorted to using a cane for support.

“When we found out, I could just visualise the people I had seen with MS, who couldn’t walk or do things by themselves and the first thing I said to Dave was, ‘You don’t have to stay with me’,” adds the 55-year-old.

“He looked at me and he said, ‘Don’t be stupid’. That was Dave.”

Julie was just 13 when she fell head over heels for Dave, who was four years her senior.

The following year, much to her father’s chagrin, he proposed.

They married when she turned 18. The Swindon-born couple settled in Freshbrook 28 years ago where they raised their children Lucy, 32 and Shaun, 28.

Julie was only beginning to adjust to life with restricted mobility on the right side of her body when she was knocked down by her first relapse.

Five others swiftly followed, each new crippling episode gnawing steadily away at her ability to move her right arm and leg. The relentless pain became increasingly difficult to bear. Depression set in.

But the worse was still to come. In April 2012, she woke up paralysed from the neck down.

By the time she was rushed to the Great Western Hospital the gravity of her situation truly dawned on her – she might never feel her husband’s touch or hold him again.

“It was not like any of the other relapses. I was terrified, I just lost the plot. “I couldn’t cope with it. I said to Dave, ‘If this is what my life is going to be like from now on, shoot me.’I didn’t want to be a burden to him. There were a lot of tears.”

Ten days later, against all odds, she felt a tingling sensation in her left fingers and toes.

Feeling partially returned to her left side but her right leg remained paralysed and still is today. Her right arm was also weakened by the relapse.

Her diagnosis was upgraded from the milder form of MS, relapsing and remitting, to the most severe, primary progressive.

Wheelchair-bound and in need of round-the-clock support, she was allowed to return home eight weeks later.

“I lost who I was. It was petrifying and degrading to have to rely on all these people,” she said.

“Dave had a stair lift fitted but we had to have a bed put in the dining room because I couldn’t go upstairs. I came home and thought, ‘Is this what life is going to be like?’ “I didn’t feel like Julie anymore. I was embarrassed. But Dave didn’t mind, he kept saying ‘Don’t be silly.’”

Living like an invalid, exiled to the ground floor was simply intolerable. With Dave’s unfailing support she regained a modicum of strength and independence.

Soon she was able to walk with a walking frame, raise herself up into the stair lift and return to the marital bed upstairs.

Unable to cope with her workload at Nationwide, however, she was forced to quit.

A semblance of normality had finally been restored when Dave, a lecturer at Salisbury College, suddenly fell ill in November 2013.

His exhaustion was put down to a benign infection by his GP, who prescribed antibiotics.

But the 58-year-old’s health only worsened and he suffered two seizures. In February, scans revealed a tumour on his brain.

Julie was still grappling with the news when the next day Dave was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. The growth on his brain had been an offshoot of the tumour in his lungs.

“It was a smack in the face, a total shock. He had two years to go before he was going to retire. We had made plans. It couldn’t be happening.”

Unable to care for him as she wished to, Julie felt inadequate and powerless.

“Our son and daughter practically moved in because I couldn’t do it on my own,” she recalls, her eyes filling with tears.

“It was frightening. I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to help him, what can I do?’ I couldn’t drive him to radiotherapy in Oxford. There was so much I couldn’t do.”

Throughout treatment Dave showed unwavering optimism.

But in June the cancer spread to his liver and kidneys and he was given three months to live.

Ten days later, he was dead.

“We had decided to put a bed in the dining room for him. We had carers and hospice nurses all the time – it was like déjà-vu.

“It was hard. We only had ten days with him in the end.”

His funeral was held on July 15, the day which would have marked their 36th wedding anniversary.

When the Great Western Hospital launched an appeal to open a dedicated radiotherapy centre in Swindon, and spare patients like Dave the exhausting daily journey to and from Oxford earlier this year, Julie vowed to back the campaign with a charity skydive.

A doctor initially forbade her from it but her GP relented. On May 29, she kissed a photograph of her late husband before setting off for Redlands Airfield.

“I took another little picture of Dave in my purse before I left the house. I put it in the pocket of my suit for the skydive.

“At first they thought I would not be able to do it because I couldn’t lift my right leg and they were worried I would break it when we landed. But I said ‘I’m doing it’.

“There was no way I wouldn’t. It was for Dave. I managed to lift my right leg slightly with my left one, and the instructor pushed it up with his knee as well before landing.

“I was floating in the air and it didn’t matter that I had MS or that I couldn’t move my leg. I didn’t care. I was on a high. “It proves that if you’re determined to do something, you can.”

She raised £1,395 towards the Brighter Futures fundraising appeal.

A severe relapse could trap Julie inside her own body at any moment. She has no way of anticipating how her condition will progress.

For now, she is living each day at it comes, never allowing grief to consume her. Dave would not have stood for it.

“I’m focusing on not getting worse,” says the grandmother-of-one resolutely. “It’s about getting through each day.

“There are days when I don’t want to get out of bed but I look at Dave’s picture on the dressing table and I think he would be cross with me – so I get out of bed. It’s all for him.

“He was that sort of person – stubborn and determined – and I can’t let him down.”

FACTFILE

• Multiple sclerosis affects nerves in the brain and spinal cord, causing a wide range of symptoms including problems with muscle movement, balance and vision. 
•  There are different types of MS: relapsing-remitting, secondary progressive or primary progressive.
•  Around eight out of 10 people with MS are diagnosed with the relapsing-remitting type. Someone with relapsing-remitting MS will have flare-ups of symptoms, known as relapses. These can last from a few days to a few months. These will be followed by periods where symptoms are mild or disappear altogether. This is known as remission and can last for days, weeks or sometimes months. 
•  Usually after about 15 years, around half of people with relapsing-remitting MS will go on to develop secondary progressive MS. In secondary progressive MS, symptoms gradually worsen over time. Some people may still have remissions but without full recovery from symptoms encountered during the previous relapse.
•  In primary progressive MS, symptoms gradually get worse over time and there are no periods of remission.
•  There is currently no cure for MS.
•  There are around 100,000 people with MS in the UK.
•  MS is not fatal but some complications that arise from severe MS, such as pneumonia, can be.
•  The Swindon Therapy Centre for MS is at Bradbury House, Westmead Drive. Visit msswindon.org.uk, call 01793 481700, or email stcswindon@btconnect.com.