LIFE-CHANGING stem cell treatment could cure a woman in Blunsdon St Andrew of her MS if she can raise enough money to pay for the procedure.

Rachel Organ hopes to fly to India in October to have the £45,000 treatment which has an 80 per cent chance of curing her condition.

The Aldi admin assistant was diagnosed in 2011 after first experiencing symptoms in 2002.

She said: “It’s not something you can control if your immune system hates you and keeps attacking you.

“I’m not a quitter and I try to just get on with life but the thought of what might happen to me in the future is really scary.”

The condition turns the body’s immune system against itself, attacking nerves around the spine and brain which causes irreversible damage.

With each relapse, Rachel loses part of herself, and she now lives with impaired vision, painful spasms, hand tremors, sporadic bouts of severe exhaustion, leg pains, and bladder problems.

The biggest shock for the 43-year-old was how the condition was also affecting her mental health.

She said: “My memory is absolutely shocking now, I thought I would get worse physically but you don’t realise it can take away your mind too, it’s terrifying.”

Rachel does not fit the criteria to have the treatment on the NHS and won’t unless her condition worsens even more.

She’ll have to go abroad and pay for the treatment herself to have any hope of stopping the relapses before she loses more of her mental and bodily functions.

She added: “They’ll take some of my bone marrow, eradicate my immune system, then use my bone marrow to rebuild it. It’s like chemotherapy.

“I’ve always been a very positive person but when someone told me about the treatment, I realised I didn’t want to live like this any more and I realised how much it had affected me.

“I want to have the same chance as everyone else of having a normal future.

“The flight’s already booked and for whatever we don’t raise, we’ll have to look into remortgaging the house.

Rachel lives with her 50-year-old husband of nine years Vincant Allan after moving to Swindon from Cirencester in 2010.

She likes to skydive in her spare time as part of the Royal British Legion Parachute Display Team.

“Vincant has been fantastic but I do worry about the impact this has on him, and my MS influenced my decision to not have children as there’s a risk of the condition accelerating after I give birth.”

Despite struggling with MS, she hasn’t taken a day off work for illness for five years but does have a nap every now and then.

Rachel was in the process of organising a big Summer Ball fundraising event until the stress of putting it all together triggered another small relapse.

She’s now coming up wiht other fundraising ideas for events in the run up to her flight.

To donate, visit gofundme.com/RachelsHSCT