Neil's story of living with motor neurone disease

IMAGINE having an itch and not being able to scratch it.

Then think about lying completely still watching your one-year-old son play with your friends because you can’t move a muscle to play with him yourself. Such experiences are just a tiny fraction of the torture Neil Platt endured as he lived with, and died from, motor neurone disease (MND).

The English architect was only 33 when he was diagnosed with the progressive neurodegenerative disease, which stops motor neurones (nerves) in the brain and spinal cord from passing messages to the muscles, telling them to move. This causes increasing loss of mobility in the limbs, and difficulties with speech, swallowing and breathing, which eventually lead to death.