CAMPAIGNING Motor Neurone Disease (MND) victim Gordon Aikman has said he is more in charge of his "life than ever before" even though he is dying.
The former policy and communications adviser to the Scottish Labour Party and director of research for the Better Together campaign met First Minister Nicola Sturgeon last month to plead for more help for Scottish victims of Motor Neurone Disease.
Mr Aikman, who was diagnosed with the terminal disease in June at the age of just 29, told the First Minister that specialist MND nurses should be paid for by the public purse and not through charitable donations from members of the public as they are now, and asked Ms Sturgeon to consider doubling the number of specialist MND nurses from seven to better care for over 400 patients across the country.
He also argued that the practice by some Scottish local authorities of charging terminally ill patients like him for their personal care should be made illegal.
Mr Aikman, who has raised more than £100,000 for his campaign since his shock diagnosis, now struggles to stand up unaided and faces spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
He said yesterday in a Sunday newspaper: "At least once a day I think to myself: 'I'm dying: I don't want to die.' Yet although I might be powerless to the force overtaking my body, I am in control of how I respond to it. I am more in charge of my life than ever before. That is a healthy, positive thing.
"In the past seven months I have travelled more than I have in the past seven years: America, Africa, the Middle East. I have been burning through savings like never before. But why do you save? For a rainy day. And for me, right now, it is pouring."
Mr Aikman has sent 12,000 emails to MSPs and MPs demanding the fast-tracking of the state benefits sufferers need to live, and asking all political parties to include a General Election 2015 manifesto promise to double investment in MND research to help find a cure.
He said: "The clock is ticking - and fast. I might just have celebrated my last Christmas. I should be planning my 30th birthday, not my funeral.
"I am not going to be around for long, but I will fight to see these changes delivered. We cannot change everything that happens to us, but we can change the way we experience it.
"Our politicians say they are listening. Yet MND kills fast. Our challenge for 2015 is to make sure they not only listen, but deliver."
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