Mum-of-five, 41, 'ignored' signs for years before shock diagnosis

A mum from Limerick has shared her story of how she 'ignored' early signs of illness before being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Carol Liston O'Connor, a 41 year old former secondary school teacher, was diagnosed with the life-changing condition in late 2022. The disease, which gradually makes moving around harder and harder, currently has no cure.

Carol, who is a mum to five children and lives in Limerick, Ireland, started feeling generally weak a few years before her diagnosis. She didn't think anything serious was wrong because she was busy looking after her five young kids during the COVID pandemic.

Looking back, Carol admits she was "ignoring" the symptoms she had, CorkBeo reports.. She said: "[There were] small things like my strength. I couldn't pick my two-year-old up off the floor. I'd have to go to the couch and sit down and they'd climb up on me."

As time went on, the symptoms got worse, making life with her husband Liam and their young children more and more difficult.

"I would've been a huge sports person and I'd be out in the yard with the lads and pucking the sliotar across the yard," she told Patricia Messinger on C103's Cork Today Show, "I would say, 'why can't I do this anymore?' I couldn't kick a ball out of my hands.

"The tiredness was really catching me. I couldn't understand how I was so tired - and then it all kind of came to a head in the summer of '22," she added.

Back in 2018, Carol had been able to cycle the Ring of Kerry - but in the summer of 2022 she found that she couldn't cycle at all. She said that when she first mentioned it to her husband, he was "half-laughing" as Carol would made jokes, asking her family "Lads, am I gone that overweight?"

Liam got a mountain bike and tried to