Pride of Australia Medal 2015: MS sufferer Renee Coffey nominated for tireless work and courage

RENEE Coffey’s passion and tireless dedication to MS research and courage in speaking publicly about her experience of MS has earned her a deserving nomination for the Pride of Australia Medal.

FOR the past four years Renee Coffey has lived with a diagnosis of “probable MS”.

In January she gave birth to her second healthy son, Lewis — a welcome playmate for big brother Alexander. Four weeks later an MRI scan detected a new lesion on her brain, evidence of a second attack on her central nervous system.

It confirmed she has MS.

“I didn’t hold out any hope that it was anything else because I knew from the first episode … and I had fully accepted the partial diagnosis,” she says.

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Coffey was 29 and newly married when the first signs appeared of this mysterious disorder which affects three times as many women as men.

Since then she has continued her highly successful career leading indigenous development programs, while also becoming a dedicated and high-profile ambassador for Kiss Goodbye to MS, speaking at countless public events to raise awareness and funds for MS Research Australia.

Her exhausting schedule during last month’s Kiss Goodbye to MS campaign culminated, she says happily, with a stunning $1 million donation from philanthropist Babak Moini.

“The public assumes that research into MS will continue because it’s right, fair or needed but it takes funding, attention, political will and public awareness and drive for research to continue and donations like this one sends funds directly into the hands of researchers to continue their vital work,” she says.

Renee Coffey is living with MS and sharing her story with others.

The cause and cure of MS remains elusive and there is no test but Australian scientists are at the forefront of a global effort to solve the mystery and believe they will do so within the next 10 years.

Coffey does not know how the disease will continue to affect her; or if her sons are at some genetic risk but she knows the answers will soon come and urges us all to support the scientists to move them faster along in the quest for a breakthrough.

Her passion and tireless dedication to MS research and courage in speaking publicly about her experience of MS has earned Coffey a deserving nomination for the Pride of Australia Medal, proudly supported by ClubsNSW.

“I’m humbled and I feel a little uncomfortable because there are people who choose to do incredibly courageous things and I feel I’ve been dealt a bad hand and for me there’s no choice but to do something good with it,” she says.

“There are lots of people who have successful careers, leading productive lives who have this condition but if everyone stays quiet and panics (when they are diagnosed) then it just breathes a culture of fear and uncertainty …. hopefully (by speaking up) we can break that cycle.”

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