WATCH: Former jockey Leah Kilner’s positivity about new multiple sclerosis challenge

WATCH THE VIDEO: Former jockey Leah Kilner continues to be an inspiration as she reveals her latest health challenge, how she’s dealing with it through positivity and how it won’t define her.

Leah Kilner is battling another major challenge in her ongoing recovery from a traumatic brain injury – her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.

But the last thing the former Queensland jockey wants is pity.

Two-and-a-half years after she nearly died in a shocking race fall at Grafton in northern NSW, Kilner has maintained her positive outlook on life as she faces up to a fresh health battle.

Not so long ago, she didn’t know what multiple sclerosis was.

After being diagnosed with MS, 26-year-old Kilner learned the chronic neurological disorder gradually damaged the sheath that covers a person’s brain and spinal cord nerves.

Doctors told Kilner it had been caused by impacts of the horrifying race fall which left her brain injured and caused partial loss of sight in both eyes.

Former jockey Leah Kilner receives her first treatment for multiple sclerosis. Picture: Leah Kilner

The ex-jockey had already been getting used to the “new normal” of her brain injury, including never being able to drive a car again, but said the fresh challenge wouldn’t stop her from living her best life.

She feels she has already been through 12 rounds with Mike Tyson (in his prime).

“In the last six months, I have really learned to accept my new way of life and I’m not going to let this MS control my life either,” Kilner told Racenet.

• PUNT LIKE A PRO: Become a Racenet iQ member and get expert tips – with fully transparent return on investment statistics – from Racenet’s team of professional punters at our Pro Tips section. SUBSCRIBE NOW!

“If I want to do something, I’m going to go do it.

“It’s taken me a lot of work with my psychologist to accept that I do things differently and this is how I do things now.

“I’ve come to terms with accepting where I am and how far I have come.

“And sometimes I forget to give myself credit for that.

“My life these days, I call it my ‘new normal’.

Leah Kilner with her dog Chanel, on top of her Brisbane apartment building which overlooks Eagle Farm racecourse. Picture: Grant Peters / Trackside Photography

“I’ve had a lot of people asking me about MS and wishing me the best but I tell them they have to remember that I’ve been through a traumatic brain injury and so I’ve already dealt with a lot of these symptoms.

“So my life isn’t going to change too much.

“After being diagnosed with MS, I asked my doctor if I could still fly and he said I could – so I went and booked myself some overseas trips for 2025.

“I can walk and talk, so I’m OK.

“There is no use sitting at home and crying in bed, you’ve got to get up and do things.”

In her recovery from her brain injury, Kilner worked for a time for champion Group 1 trainer Rob Heathcote for whom she rode when an apprentice jockey.

But she found it a struggle because of the mental fatigue of the job and she now doubts she will work in racing again.

Despite the sport almost ending her life, she still loves racing and often watches Eagle Farm races from the top of her nearby apartment building where she will put $2 bets on.

Kilner has come to terms with her MS diagnosis and recently had her first treatment for the disease – she will have another one in a fortnight and then every six months.

She admits it was initially confronting when doctors told her the news, coming after scans were ordered following an agonising headache.

“I look at everything with a positive outlook but when I was told that I had MS, I did kind of sit there and not know what to feel,” Kilner said.

“I saw my psychologist the next day and I said I just feel numb.

“I had worked hard to find a new way of life and then I got hit with that.

“I didn’t know whether to be angry or sad or what to feel.

“I got diagnosed after I had an awful sharp, stabbing headache which was nine out of 10 on the pain scale.

“I’ve got a really high pain tolerance, if I say something is sore, it is sore.

“I eventually got diagnosed with MS but I didn’t even know what it was, I had heard the term but I didn’t understand it.

“I knew nothing about it.

“My doctor said there is no cure, but there is treatment and it is a good treatment.

“So after hearing that I was filled with confidence.”

Leah Kilner in her race riding days. Picture: Grant Peters, Trackside Photography.

The last time Racenet visited Kilner in her Eagle Farm apartment was in August 2022, when she was in a wheelchair and was unable to open her left eye the following month after her fall.

Her progress has been remarkable in the time since, despite having good days and bad.

The News Corp family wishes Kilner the very best for her latest health challenge and we have no doubt she will meet it head on with the same unbreakable spirit and positivity she has shown since her race fall.

Originally published as WATCH: Former jockey Leah Kilner’s positivity about new multiple sclerosis challenge