A woman from Ramsgate is hoping to raise £50,000 for life-changing treatment.

Karen Turner, who suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), needs to travel to Moscow for a stem-cell transplant that could save her life.

The 53-year-old said: “I found out about the transplant around a year ago. I was diagnosed with secondary progressive MS and decided that I needed to go and travel whilst I still could.

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“I went off for 100 days and did some travelling. I was on a flight and a chance conversation with a guy talking about his friend that had been cured of MS is when I first heard about it.

“I connected with the woman, heard all about her story and decided that was what I needed to do.

“I have been accepted for Moscow but the costs involved with flights and everything is around £50,000.”

Karen has been suffering with debilitating condition for around 20 years and she says she doesn’t know how it’s going to affect her from one day to the next.

“That is the biggest fear, that I’m going to end up in a wheelchair or going blind." - Karen Turner

She said: “It is a rollercoaster and you never know how you’re going to be. You can wake up and have no energy at all and different things get affected every day.

“I hope it would give me a better quality of life, give me more energy and also knowing that the disease isn’t going to progress.

“That is the biggest fear, that I’m going to end up in a wheelchair or going blind.

“It would just mean being able to get my life back.”

More about these treatments and how successful they have been for MS sufferers was revealed on the BBC’s Panorama show earlier this week.

The treatment is known as an autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT or AHSCT) and it aims to destroy an MS sufferer’s faulty immune system using chemotherapy.

Patients receive bone marrow transplants using their own stem cells to rebuild the immune system and some who were paralysed were actually able to walk again.

Karen said: “Hopefully this is the future for people with MS and the NHS changes the eligibility criteria so it is available to more people. It gives people hope. It is devastating when you are first diagnosed with MS.”

Karen has to travel to Moscow for this treatment because she is unable to get the treatment on the NHS.

She explained: “I don’t fit the criteria to get this treatment on the NHS. You’ve got to have relapsing remitting MS and that you’ve failed one modifying drug and there is lots of other criteria too.”

Karen says the possibility of treatment has given her hope for the future and something to aim for.

She added: "If you take away the weight of wondering what the next day is going to bring and you’re able to think I haven’t got MS anymore, you wouldn’t have to worry about waking up and being able to see or walk.”

To find out more about Karen and donate to her appeal, visit www.turneround-ms.com.