Dear Seonaid

She is the daughter of four-time Commonwealth Games medallist Shirley McIntosh MBE and Donald McIntosh, both former international shooters, and younger sister of two-time Commonwealth champion Jen McIntosh.

When she was 17, Seonaid was shopping with her mum in Stirling when she first experienced a sharp pain in her toe. Months later, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune disease that causes intense joint pain.

She spent a lot of the next three months on crutches, drifted away from her friends and was unsure if her fledgling shooting career could continue.

However, the following summer, she competed in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and finished 19th.

With her condition under control, she went on and won two Commonwealth Games bronze medals in 2018 and World Championship gold in Changwon.

In the latest of new series on TeamGB.com, Seonaid writes a letter to her 17-year-old self just months after the diagnosis, when life was full of uncertainty and doubt, full of lessons and candid reflections on one of the moments that made her who she is today.

Dear Seonaid,

I promise you, it will get better.

The last three months have been the worst of your life and, I won’t lie, there will be some very crappy times to come.

Last night’s Christmas dance was one of the lows. You didn’t want to go, but Mum did what mums do and convinced you with those knowing words ‘you’ll regret it if you don’t’.

But just two weeks after your toe first started to hurt, your knee swelled to the size of a softball – hardly the best look for a skinny girl in a prom dress.

The pain can be immense and you can hardly walk, let alone dance, which means you had to sit on the sidelines while all your friends danced the night away and had fun. It was rubbish, despite the tinsel you put on your crutches.

Mum and Dad have just bought you a car you can’t drive, you can hardly get around school, that evil teacher keeps giving you detention for being late to her class on the top floor, and shooting seems a distant dream.

But, please Seonaid, don’t lose your friends. I know you think you’re coping but the more you shy away from going out, the more distant you’ll become. In time, you’ll realise you weren’t coping that well at all.

You think your friends don’t want to hang out with you, you fear you slow them down wherever you go and can’t join in at parties, trips to the cinema or shopping. Later on, you’ll learn that wasn’t the case at all. They want you there.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a b***h and it’s going to change your life but you must know, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Please remember that. And also, talk to people! Especially your parents.

You’ll joke and call it ‘old man’s disease’ but deep down you’re worried. Worried you’ll be one of those sick people in and out of hospital. Worried there’ll be endless operations. Worried you won’t have a full-quality life. But don’t worry, Seonaid. It will all be (mostly) fine. You’ll adapt.

Okay, at university, there will be more flare-ups. One will be so bad that Mum is going to have to bring you food and you’ll barely be able to get to the bathroom on your own, let alone to uni. Any movement will cause enough pain to draw tears. You’ll spend the entirety of the Rio Olympics on the sofa unable to do anything, with a strapped wrist and legs that no longer function. That will be the low point.

The medicine can be quite violent and is really not good for you. It will suppress your immune system, so you’ll constantly be battling colds and flu – not a great place to be in when a global pandemic arrives in 2020 (more of that later).

It can also cause serious birth defects, so when the day comes when you want to start thinking about a family – not something you’re thinking about now, I know! – it needs at least six months of planning. Luckily, you’re good at reaching long-term goals.

But it also changes you for the better. You think you have your life planned out but we can’t predict what that will look like now because there is no cure for this. Your body will probably deteriorate as you get older and you could even be wheelchair bound by 50.

But because of that you’ll be more spontaneous and live for today. There’s a freedom that comes with that and it feels good.

You want to see the world and luckily, you do although there are some places off the list because your body can’t handle the vaccine (you didn’t want to go to Nepal anyway!).

Arthritis doesn’t mean you can't go to university and get a degree, it doesn't mean you can't drive that car and pass your test and it doesn't mean shooting has to stop. You give it the middle finger and dedicate yourself to shooting. And it turns out, you’re actually pretty good.

You always knew you could be great and in just a few years, you prove you’re better than everyone by winning World Championship gold. Mum and Dad tried to sway you away from shooting – ‘It’s a lot of hard work and it makes no money’, they said. Dad wants you to focus on music because you love pipe band. But when you choose shooting, he becomes your coach and the two of you achieve great things.

In the future, you’ll get messages from old friends laughing. They’ll remind you that you spent your school days vowing to never pick up a rifle because that was ‘Jen’s thing’.

But you’ll go and become the best in the world in Korea, win Commonwealth Games medals in Australia and be on track for the Olympics.

Most Olympians say they didn’t think it was a possibility to even reach one when they were a kid but you were different. Jen went to the Games, so in your mind there was no reason you wouldn’t either.

But something called Coronavirus gets in the way of Tokyo 2020. It’s a virus, just the sort of thing you’d be prone to catching with your bad immune system... But if there’s one thing we know, people adapt to the hand they’re dealt and the world will be okay again. Tokyo has been pushed to 2021. You will get your shot at gold.

I guess what I really want to say Seonaid is that, right now, life is really rubbish and the outlook seems bleak. But stay positive because it does get better. In fact, it turns out to be bloody brilliant.

Seonaid.