“For now, I’m concentrating on life’s beauty”

Fiona MacDonald has always loved life, whether sloshing around the It’s a Knockout set in gumboots, raising her sons or sleeping out under the stars. Now as she comes to terms with a diagnosis of motor neurone disease, she treasures every moment even more.

- JENNY BROWN

The first signs were stealthy and almost imperceptible. Fiona MacDonald gradually noticed her speech was changing, slurring a little. She was having difficulty pronouncing certain sounds, a worrying development for the warm, articulate businesswoman, wine publicist, writer and former television presenter.

Although family and friends tried to reassure her, Fiona couldn’t escape the gnawing certainty that something was very wrong. “As I wasn’t sure what was happening, I thought I would practise denial for a while,” she grins courageously. “But I knew something was going on. And in the end my younger sister told me I really needed to look into it, in case it was something serious.”

The diagnosis, towards the end of last year, delivered a shattering double blow. The sometime It’s a Knockout host not only had bowel cancer – a chance discovery from a battery of medical tests – she was also in the early stages of the deadly degenerative disorder, Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

“Sitting in the specialist’s office was the first time I was grateful for the COVID mask hiding my face,” quips the witty mother-of-two. “I was still absorbing the pending cancer surgery when the neurologist said he strongly suspected my problem was MND. It was a bit of a double whammy.

“He hadn’t told me it might be a good idea to have someone with me, he just rolled out the diagnosis, asked if I knew anything about MND and then advised me not to Google it.