It hasn’t been that quiet in my surrounding world! Last week there was a crow fight so loud in our back garden that it echoed down the chimney into the front room that now is my bedroom. It sounded exactly like being in Hitchcock’s horror film “The Birds.”…
Fall Down, Get Up Again
— John Connor
In the ‘80s, John Connor created the first regular column about the burgeoning London stand-up scene. In 1990 he wrote a book about its effect on the Edinburgh Festival: “Comics: A Decade of Comedy at the Assembly Rooms.” That year he also devised and ran a live topical stand-up team show at The London Comedy Store, The Edge (It was destroyed in 2020!). In 2009 John was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS, which cut short his main job as a TV casting director for “Black Books,” “My Family,” et al. Now, John writes “Fall Down Get Up Again,” an irreverent journey with MS.
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A few columns back, I wrote about my lack of time to get anything done. Sure, the way around it would be to get up infernally early — well, early for me. But I’m most certainly not going to pay to be punished. And that’s the story I’ve always…
Ah, it’s not the blank page that all writers fear that I’m worried about. Those days have long left me. Now it’s applying the discipline to stop! When I first started with a professional writing commission, I sat in the office all day with that fear freezing me. (Those were…
“At the center of it all” is the dignity of allowing myself to retire with grace. And it only took a world-shattering event to get me to come to my senses! I’d been running, directing, producing, and sometimes writing (usually when comics got desperate with a 15-minute deadline. We…
It was 4 a.m. and a crisis was brewing. I knew that this time, I’d be a nincompoop if I tried to deal with the situation myself, as I’d faced spectacular failures recently with the poop bit. I was still groggy from having taken diazepam to deal with my…
This column will be short as I am quite ill. That’s nothing too unusual for those of us with MS. Oh, the joys of a relapse. A while back, it stopped me from walking. Now it’s stopped me from standing! Transferring anywhere is now a nightmare. I have to use…
Hi there. It’s me, typing again on my very ownsome! For the last two weeks, I’ve been too ill to manage, so my wife kindly acted as a secretary — another of her many talents! I apologize for last week’s rather gruesome outing, but trying to stick to…
My stomach is grumbling. I’ve just had the worst weekend ever. And that includes when I had my first sclerosis and smashed my shoulder to pieces on a tennis court. I mentioned last week that I didn’t want to write about C. diff., but this appalling infectious bacteria…
I’ve never done this before, but I’m dictating this column to my wife. She has many attributes, among them being trained as a secretary many years ago. We went to the same further-education college when we were both in our late teens, but never met while there. I think she…
So far, this week has been horrible, but I’ll give that a brief mention later. The truth ain’t pretty, nor do I think it always makes good copy. Unless I go for the trite “However bad it is out there, it’s even worse in my bedroom!” I’m in the perfect…
I knew a urinary tract infection (UTI) had come a visiting again. I’m now attuned to the slightest hint, like that vague burning after weeing. Indeed, it doesn’t have to burn; it could merely be the faintest tinkle — which is rather apt! This time, it went on to further…
With everything being so awful, the goal is to write uplifting copy. OK, sounds like my sort of gig. One way of dealing with things is to become self-absorbed with the old MS. I think it’s getting jealous. How can a mere virus get all this attention? MS: “I’m far…
I’ve just been sentenced to at least 18 months in solitary without time off even for good behavior! Pretty harsh. Luckily, I’m match fit. I’ve already previously done nearly a year trapped in my bedroom with only a commode and basin for most of the day. That was tough.
Quarantine sure feels like Christmas. The shops are stripped bare. The streets are empty. Family homes are stuffed with everyone returning home. In our case, my wife rescued my youngest son from his cool digs near Hammersmith in West London on Monday, just in time. The prime minister announced a…
Take a deep breath, and I don’t mean the kind promoted by fake memes infecting the web to “prove” that you don’t have COVID-19! My deep-breath moment was in a small elevator at my doctor’s office. An able-bodied woman in her 50s bounded into the elevator behind my wheelchair…
There’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned bacteriological pincer attack to take your mind off impending death. I’m not exaggerating about the impending bit. A friend/colleague was supposed to fly to Rome today for a holiday but Italy has just closed. As I write this, it was only yesterday that the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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