March 6, 2020 Columns by John Connor You Know Things Are Bad When the Banks Tell You to Wear a Mask I know the new strain of coronavirus is bad, but in the face of impending doom, I’m likely to find humor. Anyone who has had more aggressive disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) like Lemtrada (alemtuzumab) and Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) likely has a compromised immune system. After all, this is exactly what…
February 28, 2020 Columns by John Connor The World Turned Upside Down Being disabled constricts what my body does — but I’m still me. For a long time, I was trapped as I could no longer self-propel my self-propelled wheelchair. Then last summer, my powered one turned up! Wham-bam-crash-slam! Never delicate, I instantly got to slam around in my very own…
February 14, 2020 Columns by John Connor And the Biofilm Goes to … The medical profession must be sick and tired of patients diagnosing themselves via the wonders of the internet. But as a patient who’s sick and tired, you eventually have to. Medicine is full of orthodoxies that are incredibly hard to shake. When you find yourself at the edge of these…
February 7, 2020 Columns by John Connor This Story Has Legs — One Leg, At Least! This is the story of how I became a patient columnist. Three years ago, I was still walking. Shambling, anyway. I could get up and down stairs but had to rest before reaching my ordinary car with fitted hand controls. To go somewhere on my own, I needed someone to…
January 31, 2020 Columns by John Connor Here’s My ‘Veganuary’ Report I’m well aware that new converts can be bores. I started an increasingly trendy vegan lifestyle back in December. It’s only been two months, but it seems like a year! That’s because I love meat, fish, cheese, and eggs. Especially eggs. Yes, veganism is better for the planet, your…
January 24, 2020 Columns by John Connor The Mind-Body Interface Well, this is one way of showing that I attended first-year philosophy seminars: Draw on the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle, then leap two millennia to Descartes. I never studied history, but I’m actually far more comfortable with it! Also, I don’t think I’ve ever built a column based on…
January 17, 2020 Columns by John Connor It’s Only a Matter of Time There was a time when I didn’t have deadlines. I’d finally finished academia. No more essays ever! In theory, I still had seven essays to write. Luckily, those essays could only improve my grade, so I got away with it. But only to a degree. I just scraped by with…
January 10, 2020 Columns by John Connor Lo, on the Very First Vegan Christmas Only 347 shopping days to go! So don’t dismiss this as a column about last Christmas (though that’s what it is!) but as possibly the first on the planet about the next one. Luckily, I quite like nut roast. But it is very much “quite” like. I don’t like it…
January 3, 2020 Columns by John Connor Keep Taking the Tablets What did I write about last New Year’s? As usual, it was related to a bodily function: urinary tract infections (UTIs). Then, readers almost unanimously recommended methenamine hippurate. I had tried several times to get the medication prescribed. Then, a few months ago, my local multiple sclerosis…
December 20, 2019 Columns by John Connor Santa Is on a Secret Mission This would be Santa’s third year as a disabled, magical creature. He seemed to be the only one but took some comfort that even the mighty Avengers had taken a few casualties. Not a Christian thought for someone who was once considered a saint. However, illness had ground down…
December 13, 2019 Columns by John Connor Stop in the Name of Leukocytes I rolled onto the neurology ward of the hospital that has been dealing with my disease from the beginning. The nurses, whom I’ve met innumerable times, opened with their normal jolly, “How are you?” I can never resist, “Well, I have got MS!” It was 8 in the morning. I’d…
December 6, 2019 Columns by John Connor How ‘The Terminator’ Changed John Connor With “The Terminator” involved, it’s fair enough that this tale starts out as a father-son thing. My son, Jack, kept needling me to watch a film on Netflix U.K. called “The Game Changers.” My wife had also watched it and heavily backed the suggestion. Both had a knowing gleam…
November 15, 2019 Columns by John Connor This Could Be the Last Time Fear grips me. Marijuana relaxes, eases pain, and helps my body work better. It also stirs paranoia, but only when you let it. In bed, a fretful waking dream. This is a problem when you actually have something to be paranoid about! I don’t remember all my last times…
November 8, 2019 Columns by John Connor MS Really Enjoys Hitting Below the Belt I didn’t file a column last week due to medical reasons. It’s a perfect excuse for a patient columnist — we don’t need a dog to blame for eating our homework. The multiple sclerosis dog is more than happy to put us on the floor; in my case, even three…
October 25, 2019 Columns by John Connor Pip, Pip, Hooray! Months of Work and Worry Pay Off By 2017, over 50,000 people with disabilities in the U.K. had lost their accessible vehicles due to reassessments required by Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a financial assistance program for people with disabilities. Motability Scheme is a program that provides financial assistance to help people lease an accessible…
October 18, 2019 Columns by John Connor This Week, I Feel Like I’m Growing Up Again As I sit down (nothing unusual there — all I do these days is sit down!) and write this, I’m 62 years and one day old. On Saturday morning, it felt like I still had a few days to go before I reached the heady height of a 2-year-old. I’m…
October 11, 2019 Columns by John Connor I’m a Big Boy Now Many of us live with a reality that we’re too embarrassed to talk about, even with medical professionals. Multiple sclerosis (MS) prevents us from pooing properly — no matter how much fiber we consume or how much water we drink. I wrote about this in a recent column. As…
October 4, 2019 Columns by John Connor Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: A Weekend of UTIs For the last few months, urinary tract infections (UTIs) have been the main subject of this column. My current disease-modifying therapy, Ocrevus (ocrelizumab), has had a significant impact on my multiple sclerosis (MS). The only downside is that Ocrevus attacks B-cells in the body, increasing the risk…
September 27, 2019 Columns by John Connor After Hitting Rock Bottom, I’m on My Way Back Up I’ve been whinging for months now about struggling on through near-constant urinary tract infections. This week’s joyous occasion was finally having a poo (hurrah), but then not having the energy to do anything about the result (boo). I’d spent something like five hours attacking the problem with my new…
September 20, 2019 Columns by John Connor I’m an Old Hand at Dealing with MS Mishaps “Events, my dear boy, events.” Because of my own political proclivities, I don’t tend to quote old Conservative prime ministers, unless, of course, it’s Winston Churchill. In his semi-youth, he crossed the floor to join the Liberal Party twice: “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of…
September 13, 2019 Columns by John Connor Going Mobile, Part 2: I’m Powering Around the House Ah, the sequel. Back in April, I wrote about getting an electric wheelchair and then spending hours working out how to get it going. Six months later, I may have cracked the challenge of driving it without putting cracks in my house. When a district nurse visited last…
September 6, 2019 Columns by John Connor Under Pressure There’s always something. The trouble with a mélange of complex medical issues is that one good action often can lead to a bad secondary one. It’s like a game of consequences that unfortunately not only injures your psyche, but also leaves a mark on the body. In my case, it…
August 30, 2019 Columns by John Connor My Disabled Wheelchair Things had been going well with my electric wheelchair, but now I found myself out of control, heading toward the TV. I put my one good foot down in a feeble attempt to delay what seemed inevitable. Somehow, the foot — or perhaps sheer good luck — saved the TV.
August 23, 2019 Columns by John Connor Life Is Better with a Local MS Nurse I was struck down by sclerosis in 2006 — literally. I was playing tennis and ran to return a drop shot. I never made it, but I did drop myself and rupture my right shoulder. It was so severe that it took two operations to rectify. The first few years…
August 16, 2019 Columns by John Connor Up Peristeen, or How to Beat the Blockade The joys of MS are never-ending. One area that gets disrupted by this disease of the central nervous system is our pelvic regions. That affects bladder, bowel, and sexual function. I’ve written about all of this in previous columns. My bladder failed less than two years after I…
August 9, 2019 Columns by John Connor An Open Letter to a Newly Diagnosed Patient I’ve been a co-moderator on the MS News Today Forums for a couple of months now and recently wrote a reply to a newly diagnosed patient, Jono. He’s only had MS for a month. I found myself writing what I wished I’d known when I was diagnosed. Now,…
August 2, 2019 Columns by John Connor Hell Week: Record Heat Teams Up with a Sneaky Infection Last Thursday was the hottest day ever recorded in U.K. history at 101.6 degrees F. Heat sensitivity is enough to reduce me to the puddle I described last week. But it doesn’t explain the shaking of my body and the extreme pain in my right arm Thursday night. Not…
July 26, 2019 Columns by John Connor Beaten by the Heat: Oh, What a Night! It’s 1 p.m. in the U.K., and it’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit. I can hardly move due to the heat. My left hand is typing this. The rest of my body has shut down. Tomorrow is forecast to be the hottest July day in recorded history in the U.K. I had set…
July 19, 2019 Columns by John Connor I Survived My ‘Home Alone’ Weekend OK, this was my first test. Accomplish this and Day One should be a breeze. The trick is not to panic. You’ve crossed a continent with your thumb — now all you have to do is get out of bed on your own. You manage it most days…
July 12, 2019 Columns by John Connor Eight Days a Week It was such a jam-packed week that the flavor was definitely multi-fruit! It included a meet-cute with a barber inspired by Richard Curtis (rom-com writer of “Notting Hill” and others). As no romance — or indeed, bromance — was involved, it was more of a meet-cut. I’ve…