Author Archives: Mike Knight

“If I were you two, I think I’d plan for the worst,” Amy, my physiatrist, said to my wife and me as we sat in the examination room. It was just after 11 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 18. January has become one of two pivotal months in terms of…

Not long ago, I dreamed I was running. Again. It was the first time I’d had the dream in a while. It was always the same, “Been Caught Stealing,” or something like it roaring in my headphones, me in stride and rhythm with the…

“The reason you can’t keep your shorts up,” the orthopedist said, “is because you don’t have enough butt anymore.” It was my first visit with this doctor, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. While waiting in a small, wood-paneled anteroom next…

I’m not taking all the medication I’ve been prescribed. Chances are, you’re not either. Medication nonadherence, or not taking medicine as prescribed, is a thing — a big thing. According to a column in The New York Times,…

Third in a series. Read parts one and two. In March 2018, I began a personal research project — quest if you will — to assess how functional electrical stimulation (FES) devices might help me deal with the foot drop in…

I knew it was going to be one of those days as soon as I opened my eyes. I woke in some sort of half-start, my eyelids popping abruptly open as I looked up at the ceiling. Something seemed…

Second in a series. Read part one. The thing about functional electronic stimulation (FES) devices, at least to me, is waiting for them to engage. No matter how much I prepare myself, I’m still surprised — on pins and needles, if you will —…

First in a series. For a minute or two, I felt like I was in a time machine. It was late March, and I was test driving (perhaps test walking) the WalkAide System, a functional electronic stimulation (FES) device designed, according…

April is my month. The weather gets warmer, the world gets greener, and everything just generally lightens up. I was born in April. My wife and I were married in April. My favorite holiday is April Fools’ Day. I love…

It is noon on Wednesday, and I am sitting in a chair in our living room. My wife holds two books against my hips, one on either side, while Stefani, my occupational therapist, measures the width — measuring me for a wheelchair. Like a lot…

Living your best life with MS often means fighting the disease and its many symptoms on multiple fronts. Multiple Sclerosis News Today forums were created to let you learn and share information, tips and ideas about MS, and to build a supportive community around those whose lives are influenced by…

It was late May 2014, and my wife and I were on our first trip to the Cleveland Clinic. We’d been to Cleveland for a wedding a few years earlier but had been too busy to explore. We booked a room at the…

You can’t swing a sweaty workout towel these days without hitting an article or report about the health benefits of exercise to people with MS. “Exercise is quickly being recognized as one of the most important approaches for self-managing the consequences of MS,” said…

Between fatigue, muscle weakness, imbalance and other problems associated with MS, living with the disease often demands a lot of effort and energy, even for the simplest of tasks. Conserving (and managing) your energy can help you spend more of it doing the…

“Today we’re going to talk about the Four Ps,” Stephanie says. “You’ve probably heard of these already, but let’s go through them anyway.” I look at her the way a dog tilts its head when it hears a high-pitched whistle. Like…

A whopping 43 percent of all people with MS have some type of anxiety disorder. Worse, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America, “Anxiety is perhaps the most taxing and under-treated psychological effect of living with MS.”  Which makes sense. The unpredictability of…

Gait and balance issues and MS go together like peanut butter and chocolate. At least they do to me. In one way or another, they’ve been in the foreground of my life since I was diagnosed in 2013.

If you have MS, chances are really good that you have MS-related fatigue — about 80 percent of people with MS do according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society of America. Like almost everything else about MS, the symptoms and severity of fatigue vary…

An estimated 85 percent of people with MS experience some type of spasticity due to the disease, according to a recent report (p/w) published in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. Why is that important? Because spasticity is behind many of the disease’s most debilitating physical, emotional and mental…

Nothing resets your thinking like bouncing your head off a hardwood floor. At least, for me. It was about 10 p.m. on a Saturday night, and we were shutting down the house. That routine consists of turning lights off, locking doors, and plugging in phones and…

What I’m about to write will sound like I am tooting my own horn. I’m not. Really. But something is working for me in my battle to navigate the stairs in our house, something that might help others…

Like a lot of people with MS, I took part in the “Great Ocrevus Rush of 2017,” with the fanfare surrounding the release of the first therapy in the United States known to have some ability to stem the advancement of primary and secondary progressive MS.

Effectively managing MS may require ongoing appointments with multiple specialists on your health care team — including neurologists, physical and occupational therapists and others. And it goes without saying they’re busy (for an inside look at how busy doing what, go here and here). Making the most…

I am on “house arrest.” Sort of. Let me explain. Earlier this year, I wrote Large and In Charge: Building a Better MS Care Team, a column about my frustration with my…

Going to a show to see a band or a play or a big event may be your idea of having fun, and MS-related challenges — especially mobility — don’t have to be game-changers and keep you from the spectacle of it all, especially with a little planning. Bars, bands…

According to a 2015 report, there are 43.5 million caregivers in the United States today — roughly six million more people than the population of California. And according to a recent column by Ed Tobias, caregiving can be a hard and thankless task. Let’s change…

Though I don’t always use it, I take my cane with me every time we go shopping. I can still shuffle to the cart pickup and drop-off without it and the cart doubles as my walker. Canes can be clunky, aren’t easily stored, and I simply…

Stop for a second and think about this: 2.3 billion smart phone users worldwide will download an estimated 268 billion mobile apps in 2017. Three quarters of adults in the U.S. own a smartphone and nearly 90 percent of the…

Face it: Understanding MS isn’t easy — even if you have it. There’s no known cause, no cure, no predictability in progression, and while there are common symptoms and manifestations, they affect everyone differently. Some symptoms come and go with no rhyme or reason and…

With the year-end holiday season hurtling towards us, now is the time many of us start planning to hit the road — making way to see family, friends and loved ones, or seeking out warm weather havens or preparing for snow-covered vacations. Here are some basic tips for traveling with…