Cath Baker struck down with Motor Neurone Disease after caring for fellow sufferer Angie Cunningham

CATH Baker picked a front-row seat as Angie Cunningham crumpled into Motor Neurone Disease. In March, doctors dealt Cath bad news.

CATH Baker picked a front-row seat as Angie Cunningham crumpled into Motor Neurone Disease.

She saw at close range her friend lose use of her arms, then her speech, her legs, her ability to swallow and breath.

It was a creeping nightmare which Cath, a nurse, was well qualified and keen to help her friend through. For a few years, she spent a day once a week being Angie’s legs, her arms and her voice as each failed.

Angie was unlucky. Only one in every 500 Australian women will be diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. There is no cure yet. There is no way to stop it. And there is no real knowing who it will take.

MND sufferers Neale Daniher, Ange Cunningham and Catherine Baker. Picture: David Caird

If you crunch the numbers, Cath — given her close link to Angie — had as much chance of dying from a meteorite strike than developing MND at the same time as her friend. That’s one chance in 250,000. It isn’t contagious.

In March, doctors dealt her some news. Cath had MND. It is absurd that these two women, who’d grown up in neighbouring Tasmanian towns and became friends when their daughters started at the same Melbourne school, should both be hit with the same piece of space junk.

THE BIG FREEZE: BEANIE UP TO FIGHT MND

Cath Baker was stunned to learn she has MND, like her beloved friend Ange Cunningham. Picture: David Caird

But when you’re the statistical One, then the numbers don’t matter anymore. And Cath now faces death by a beast she knows intimately.

Angie is married to Pat Cunningham, who is one of the “three amigos” with footy great Neale Daniher, who also has MND. Their group Cure for MND is putting its might behind a push to raise the millions needed to fund research into a cure.

They’re trying to stop the “revolving door” of diagnosis and death. Two are diagnosed daily in Australia and two will die.

The second Big Freeze between Melbourne and Collingwood will take place at half time on June 13 at MCG. Last year, Cath was with Angie watching celebrities slide into a pool of ice on the Cunningham family TV.

Angie was already immobile and sometimes struggling for breath. She talks now through eye gaze on her tablet.

“They say the great friends are there holding your hand in your darkest moments and Cath is that friend,’’ she says.

Two months later, Cath started to feel the strength in her right arm go. She remembers asking Angie’s friend and physiotherapist for advice.

Cath with her family, Meg, Scarlett, Georgia and husband Grant. Picture: David Caird

She started seeing health professionals who were stumped. Then the medical tests began. And finally the appointment with the neurologist.

Cath looked at the specialist after he’d conducted nerve tests.

“I think I know what you’re looking for,” she told him.

He just nodded silently.

She and husband Grant told their three girls the news. They screamed. They’d expected to hear their mother’s breast cancer had returned from six years earlier.

Everybody thought that if Cath died young, it would be from cancer. The girls saw Angie often too. They’d seen what MND had done to her and would now do to their mum.

“I’m most dreading losing my mobility — the ability to walk and to drive,” Cath says.

But there is a wheelchair in the garden shed, waiting, for when it is needed.

For now, Cath is using Angie’s wisdom to confront the future. She counts herself lucky that she’s seen first-hand what’s ahead.

“Angie has so much wisdom. She’s my hero. I’ve never heard her complain,” Cath says.

“I’m writing in my own handwriting for as long as I can, penning letters to my girls.

“Then they’ll have it to keep when I’m gone.”

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