Fall Down, Get Up Again
— John Connor

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…

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…

“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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…