 As parents, we all worry about our children – even when they've moved out to start their own lives. So, when my 25-year-old son Rudy called me at 8.30am one morning back in February 2013 to chat, I knew something was wrong. He had a solid routine at the gym, but was struggling to use the step master, and couldn't lift the same weights with his right hand as he could with his left. Rudy mentioned his symptoms almost casually and told me that I shouldn't overreact. My heart sank to my toes and I tried hard to let him not hear the panic I was feeling. I knew something must be wrong. But never did it cross my mind that this was the beginning of the end. He'd just spent Christmas with me, my husband Som and his younger brother Arjun, and thought he'd lost strength because of the holiday break. I told myself not to be concerned. Rudy was a strapping young lad in his mid-twenties - at 6'4, he'd always been healthy and fit. I tried hard to let him not hear the panic I was feeling (Picture: The Rudy A Menon Foundation) But by the first week of February, he started to feel a little drag in his right leg. After visits to his GP and then a neurologist, he was admitted to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham – as that's where Rudy lived at the time – where he underwent extensive neurological tests that all came back negative. By now, our boy had started to noticeably slow down. Something was wrong, we just didn't know what. We moved him to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery – it was near our home in North London, so I could cook for and look after him. By this time he had to be supported as he walked and bathed. His vision was getting poorer – he was passionate about Formula 1 and was distraught that he would not be able to watch it on TV. Something was wrong, we just didn't know what (Picture: The Rudy A Menon Foundation) After spending a month undergoing more tests, we were given){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
As parents, we all worry about our children – even when they’ve moved out to start their own lives.
So, when my 25-year-old son Rudy called me at 8.30am one morning back in February 2013 to chat, I knew something was wrong.
He had a solid routine at the gym, but was struggling to use the step master, and couldn’t lift the same weights with his right hand as he could with his left.
Rudy mentioned his symptoms almost casually and told me that I shouldn’t overreact.