The People's Strictly: meet Cassidy Little and Trishna Bharadia

Being on Strictly is everything that I dreamt it would be, and more – every time I think it can’t get any better, it just does. When they’re interviewing me on camera, I keep saying, “I’m running out of adjectives!” Everything’s fabulous, everything’s amazing, everything’s brilliant!

It’s an exhausting process, though, and for someone with MS it’s probably doubly, triply exhausting. It has really been tough that way. During the training time, my professional dance partner Aljaz has been brilliant, and when I need rest breaks we take rest breaks. My health always has to come first. Coming into this process was quite daunting because I knew that I was going to have to explain to people what living with MS is like and how I have to plan my life in order to cope with it.

MS affects everybody completely differently. I have what is known as relapsing or remitting MS, which means I have a distinct attack of symptoms, and then a period of recovery. The severity of the attack and the time between attacks can be completely different every time. My last one was two weeks ago.

My first symptoms started in 2004 when I lost the strength in my hands and I couldn’t grip. It came on gradually and eventually I couldn’t hold a knife and fork to cut up my food. But at the time, it was put down to repetitive strain injury because I was at the computer a lot.

Three years later I completely lost the feeling down one side of my body. I went to scratch my knee and realised I couldn’t feel anything. I went for MRI scans over the course of a few months and they confirmed that I had lesions on my spinal cord – Multiple Sclerosis actually means “multiple scars”.

Now my overriding symptom is fatigue, which can hit me daily or it can be for a sustained period when I struggle every single day for weeks. Before I was diagnosed, I was really fit and loved playing hockey. I played hockey at school seven days a week and then joined the hockey team at university. I played at county level, and now play for a club. I used to be able to train twice a week and play two matches in a weekend. Now, I only manage the one.

I don’t train during the week because I just... I can’t. And even after my match on a Saturday, that’s me for the day. I get home and I’m wiped out. But hockey is something I love and don’t want to give up, unless I have to. I will spend the rest of the evening on the sofa, watching television – so I love it when Strictly’s on!

It was my younger sister Anisha who saw the call after the show one Saturday night and nominated me for The People’s Strictly, for all the MS work I do.

And I couldn’t be more grateful. Dancing makes me happy. Even if I’m doing housework, I’ll have the music on, and it will take me twice as long to do the vacuuming because a really good song will come on and I’ll have a dance!

As told to Alexia Skinitis

The People's Strictly for Comic Relief begins on Wednesday 25th February at 9pm on BBC1