Lucy Lintott was just 19 years old when doctors told her how very ill she really was.

She'd known for a while that something wasn't quite right. It had begun with her left hand, which had suddenly grown weaker, then she'd started walking into things, stumbling as her legs gave way under her.

But when neurologist Dr Webb examined her hand and mentioned "muscle wasting" she had to force a smile to hide her nerves.

Within days she was sat in a room by herself in the Acute Stroke Ward in Glasgow Southern General hospital.

The name terrified her and she called her mother to discuss the possibilities of what the diagnoses could be - a stroke had been one of them, the others were a brain tumour and Multiple Sclerosis.

As she sat on the bed looking out of the ward window, the names of diseases whirled in her head like a roulette wheel, not knowing which condition her doctors would land on.

She watched the cars coming and going from the hospital, envious of those leaving, wishing that she could just be at college instead.

She lay still through the MRI scans, concentrating on what she would get her sister for her birthday, and later, when the needle of the lumber puncture went into her spine and she grew scared, she sucked her thumb to calm herself.

Then the results came through. It was herself, two doctors, a nurse and her father in the room.

It was Motor Neurone Disease they told her. She had never heard of it but her father was crying and Dr John had raised his hands to his face.

"There is no cure," he said.

Lucy was not given a prognosis but the life expectancy for about half of MND sufferers is three years from the start of symptoms.

She asked all the questions she could think of to ask and got the answers she needed but didn't want.

Yes, there was a drug that could maybe give her an extra four months to live. No, she wouldn't be able to have children, her body would be too weak for that.

The time came for her to begin to tell her friends about her diagnoses.

"It broke my heart every time, I cried each time," she says. But then Lucy began to write. She wrote about her illness, each memory in the hospital.

How she watched the Big Bang Theory to keep her mind off things and how much pain she felt to see her family suffer with her.

"Each loved one that you have to break the news to causes a little bit of you to disappear and by the end, you just put yourself into auto-pilot so it doesn't hurt as much," she wrote.

"Realising that my new life expectancy age is 22-24, I've just lost 60 years in the space of 30 seconds!

"How is that even possible? My closet loved ones are the ones who it has hit the hardest."

Every bit of pain and frustration poured out through her fingers and onto her blog.

'Lucy's Fight' she called it. And it was.

The progressive wasting illness attacks the nerves, cutting off the signals from the brain to the muscles and imprisoning sufferers inside their bodies. It is incurable - and terminal.

Next month, on November 12, it will be three years to the day since Lucy began her battle with the disease.

She's had countless hospital appointments, physio sessions and endless treatments - but she's also filled her days with a whole lot more.

She's been to Paris and Italy, gotten a tattoo and baked a souffle.

She's seen the white cliffs of Dover and flown in a helicopter, celebrated her 21st birthday and sent off a message in a bottle, casting it off into the ocean for someone else to find.

"I haven't managed to tick swimming with sharks off yet," she says, but if anyone can do it, it's Lucy.

Her bucket list of 45 adventures, drawn up on her blog when she decided to grab every single day she had left to live, has been whittled down to her final 19 goals.

She wants to be a bridesmaid and she says she still has to make a difference to a person's life.

Those who know her well or hear her story may argue that she has already done so.

In the last three years, Lucy's tireless campaigning has managed to raise more than £100,000 for MND Scotland, to help find a cure for other people fighting the disease.

"She is caring and considerate. She has always been the type of person to put other people's needs before her own," says her sister Laura.

"She has the most incredible and infectious smile and laugh. I love her more than words can ever express.

"Even though this hideous disease has infected Lucy's body, it hasn't infected her spirit."

Now aged 22, Lucy's MND is affecting her speech and movement but she is determined to mark the anniversary of her diagnosis with a celebration.

"In November i'll have been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease for three years," she says.

"To celebrate being in the 30% of patients that make it three years, I'm hosting a 'Three Years Diagnosed Charity Ball And Auction' in Elgin.

"Every year near the anniversary of my diagnosis I get upset and down, so this year I decided to celebrate it with a fundraiser. At least I'll keep my mind busy."

Lucy has had her dress picked out since June and plans to throw a full black tie ball complete with a six-piece band.

Tickets can be purchased by emailing lucysfight@hotmail.com and she has asked anyone who can donate auction prizes to please get in touch.

There will also be dinner, dancing and speeches, and even though Lucy sometimes struggles with her own words now, she says she still has one big piece of advice to share.

"Live," she says. "Live like there is no tomorrow."

You can follow Lucy's journey and bucket list here and on her Facebook page.