Paula Mieczkowski

Fatigue used to be what I hated the most about my MS. Wheelchair tennis sessions started out well – by the end, oh dear.
Now that I’m in a powered wheelchair, the list of problems has grown exponentially. Not sure of my current myriad ones which I’d choose. Force me to pick one by starting a conversation about yours.
As MS affects all of us diffe…[Read more]

Using medical marijuana helps me significantly when it comes to managing my spasticity. However, for various reasons, I can’t get any right now. As such, I’m relying on diazepam at a level that isn’t healthy.
Do you use medical marijuana for managing spasticity?
Cheers John

If you get Mental Fatigue, have you tried to do anything about it? In my case, it was like working through a rasping smog.
My neurologist eventually solved mine with modafinil.
As with any drug they have different effects on all of us. Tell me your experiences, please.

Calm, calm, calm.

Beer drinking maybe a risk in causing MS but there doesn’t seem to be any statistical risk in making it worse once you have it. Phew.

The overall data in the report illustrates recent studies have been very mixed.

Which is a relief as the occasional (OK mostly daily can of beer) is one of my few pleasures. Especially as I s…[Read more]

Though MS is not itself a terminal disease, our chances of dying earlier than otherwise are likely to be some 75% higher.
Not a great start to a topic but there is at least some upside. If you have a private pension in the UK and make it to retirement age, with a disease like MS you can opt for an enhanced annuity. This gives u a fixed annual…[Read more]

Now this is exciting. It’s not on a mouse but Annabelle.
The MS UK Society is reporting this trial is about to start.
By repurposing existing diabetes and hay fever drugs.
The trial is testing two drugs in combination:
Metformin is an existing diabetes treatment.
Clemastine is an antihistamine used to treat hayfever.
I tried Clemastine myself f…[Read more]

According to the British MS Society, bladder dysfunction occurs in at least 80 percent of people with MS.
As I am most definitely part of the 80%, I was intrigued when this article popped up in my inbox recently ‘Why Using a Urinary Catheter Can Cause Constipation and What to Do About It’ I’ve been self-catheterising – OK, OK, using intermi…[Read more]

With the summer upon us in the Northern hemisphere – we’ve already got an unseasonal heat wave here in the UK this week – this finding of ‘Low Levels of APP Molecule Found in Patients With MS-related Fatigue’ is, to my limited medical knowledge, the first time there may be a scientific explanation for this anchor to the majority of our lives…[Read more]

In the UK even getting medicinal cannabis prescribed is a struggle. I wrote about this in one of my columns back in 2019. It was kicked off by a battling mother of a child with severe epilepsy. The only thing that worked was liquid marijuana which she bought legally in Holland and was eventually caught smuggling through customs. She had no choice…[Read more]

Up until now, we here at Multiple Sclerosis News Today have published 83 articles about, or at least mentioning, the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in connection to a possible cause of MS.
Many of us find it difficult to take in complex written information. To be honest, even though this is part of my job as a moderator of this forum, I also feel…[Read more]

It’s column plugging time again.

This week it’s about meeting Chris in a coffee bar and him telling me about a therapy that I’d never heard of: ‘What sparked my interest was his story about how he ended up in bed for two years with a totally dead leg, and then restored it with some sort of electrical therapy. My right leg has been immobile for…[Read more]

Yup, a plug for my latest column. The title is about the methodologies I’ve discovered to wear trousers that also allow me to pee using a catheter.

If you also use a wheelchair and catheterize, how do you manage? Any tips?