sport news Former Gloucester lock Ed Slater opens up about being diagnosed with MND at the ... trends now
Ed Slater is sitting in the corner of a cafe in Cheltenham, with shoulders so broad they block the sunlight from coming through the window. On the face of it, he does not seem much different to the enforcer who was playing professional rugby for Gloucester last season. A giant of a man.
The room is full of laughter. He has been making jokes about some of the realities of motor neurone disease, comparing the information booklet for patients to a holiday brochure. Fresh-faced and 34 years old, with his wife Jo beside him, it feels like this conversation is about somebody else.
He was diagnosed with the terminal illness in July. There are no apparent symptoms at first glance, until he picks up the left arm he has been leaning on. He pulls at his fingers with little resistance, showing their loss of function, and suddenly it all feels real.
Former rugby player Ed Slater has opened up about being diagnosed with motor neurone disease
‘The strength isn’t there anymore,’ demonstrates Slater. ‘The strength and dexterity has deteriorated down my left side. Small things like doing up shirt buttons or putting on trousers have become difficult.
‘Me and Jo went to the gym this morning. I use the machines now, rather than the free weights. If I’m wobbling all over the place with dumbbells then I’ll cause someone an injury. I’ve got enough going on without dropping a dumbbell on my head!’
If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.
Underneath his baggy jumper, Slater’s left arm has started to deteriorate. Sooner or later, the rest of his body will follow. Over the course of two hours, the young couple often resort to humour. They find a way of filling the room with smiles as they discuss the cruel reality of their world.
Slater's wife Jo says that they are trying to help their children as much as possible
‘You’ve got to find humour in it,’ he says. ‘We walked into hospital in July, I got diagnosed with MND and walked out with a brochure as if I’d invested in a timeshare. More or less you’re left in the dark and you find your own way through it. You have to figure out what works for you.
‘Sometimes you just want a little bit of calm and normality from it all. Everyday boring stuff. The school run, going to the supermarket, cleaning the house. Things that you used to curse because you couldn’t be bothered. They’re the things that keep your mind occupied. I don’t think I could sit on the sofa being depressed all day. It wouldn’t help Jo, it wouldn’t help the kids and it definitely wouldn’t help me.’
It was last November when Slater first started experiencing symptoms. He was kept awake by muscle twitches throughout the night. ‘They became relentless… 24 hours a day’. Eventually he alerted the medical team at Gloucester, reaching his own conclusion before the official diagnosis.
‘Since February, unless a miracle happened, I knew I was on this path. I’d bounced around the room with it. There’s part of you that lives in that space of “not yet” — I’d lost a bit of strength in my arm but I was still running around with the boys,’ says Slater, a lock, who previously spent seven years at Leicester and captained England during a midweek match on the 2014 tour of New Zealand.
‘The week before my diagnosis, at the start of pre-season, I went to catch a ball and thought, “Jesus Christ”. There was no dexterity in my arm. I’d lost the ability to catch and pass without thinking about it. I was shovelling out s***. Fraser Balmain is my best mate and he’d known about it all the way through. He said, “Mate, you’ll be all right,” but at the end of that day I said, “I’m done”. I rang George Skivington that night, July 5, and said, “This is no good, mate”.
‘It was the least of my worries. I didn’t need to be thinking about training or whether I looked stupid running. Rugby was a good distraction to start with but it got to a point where rugby was almost irrelevant.’
Listening in, Jo intervenes: ‘It’s mad to hear you say that after however many years. You lived and breathed it. It was a mindset shift. Rugby had always been No 1. It was almost a relief to take a step back. Gather yourself and work out how to shift into this new stage.’
Slater is pragmatic about the future. He knows things will soon become more challenging.
Slater is pragmatic about the future and knows things will soon be more challenging for him
‘My outlook has changed. I look at the short term now. The furthest ahead I’m looking is a trip to Australia in October, something we’ve always wanted to do. That’s the furthest down the line I’m looking.
‘The advice you get is to adapt your home as soon as you can. You don’t want to be living in a building site when you’re more or less f*****. We’re getting builders sorted. We’re lucky we’ve got space to bring the garage into the house. It’s more or less putting a bedroom and a wet room downstairs.
‘Have you ever used a Japanese toilet? Some of them have
