Fall Down, Get Up Again
— John Connor

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…