August 4, 2023 Columns by John Connor MS comorbidities make me a stranger in a strange body I was never a hypochondriac until multiple sclerosis (MS) whacked me. A catastrophic fall while playing tennis in 2007 resulted in a shoulder separation that took two operations to fix. The pain was so bad that, at the time, MS was just something else I had. To be accurate,…
June 10, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Does Medical Marijuana Help the Pain That Comes With MS? Will your doctor approve you to buy medical marijuana (MMJ)? Two of mine will and one won’t. The doctor who won’t, a primary care physician who works within a medical group, told me it’s the group’s policy. The problem, she explained, is that there are no guidelines. How do you…
February 11, 2022 Columns by John Connor The Big Blue Bag and a ‘Cast Away’ Bed Once upon a time, long, long ago, when I was very young, we British children would be asked, “Whatās through the round window?” The line was from a TV series called “Play School.” The swinging ’60s may have been breaking in London, but culturally, this was the happening show…
February 11, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias What Is Trigeminal Neuralgia in MS All About, Anyway? My immediate thought after reading a recent MS News Today headline stating that trigeminal neuralgia (TN) affects more than 3% of MS patients was, “Really, only 3%?” The reason is I’ve seen several complaints about the condition, which causes excruciating pain in the face. As the story noted, TN…
February 7, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Predicting Disease Progression, Temelimab, Trigeminal Neuralgia Combined Data May Predict Personās Risk of Advancing From CIS to MS Clinically isolated syndrome is sometimes called “early MS.” It’s the diagnosis used when someone’s symptoms don’t quite look like MS, but it does appear that MS is lurking. It may take years for an actual…
January 28, 2022 News by Vanda Pinto, PhD Study: Trigeminal Neuralgia Affects More Than 3% of Patients Trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic pain condition characterized by shocks or burning sensations in the face, seems to be much more common among people with multiple sclerosis (MS) than in the general population, according to a review of published studies. This condition also is more prevalent in women with…
January 21, 2022 Columns by John Connor The World According to MS Ennui Move along, move along. Nothing to read here. What a great start to a column! Last week, my worries about MS lifted as I was consumed by a glitch in my computer software. Iām pleased to report that Iāve found a whole series of admittedly fiddly workarounds. Iām even…
October 29, 2021 Columns by John Connor I’m Back in the Desert Without a Horse Well, that was fun. I’ve got my party hat on from a recent birthday (of course I have one, itās my trusty trilby! See my avatar above) and have been out and about having a lot of fun. I splurged by spending time with family and friends, ’cause…
July 30, 2021 Columns by John Connor The Painful Tooth: My Weekend of Agony Iāve written about trigeminal neuralgia (TN), which entails severe facial pain, many times. Let me count the ways. Please excuse me while I go off and search through my columns. I’ll be a while. Well, it turns out I’ve written specifically about it only three times,…
July 2, 2021 Columns by John Connor Will Football Help Me Get Through a Tough Week? Right, I actually have to start writing my column early this week because of the football schedule. For you Americans, that’s soccer, y’all. The biggest, most popular game in the world! The UEFA European Football Championship, or the Euros, is on. It’s the 2020 competition, but it’s being held…
June 4, 2021 Columns by John Connor My Latest Trigeminal Neuralgia Attack Was Like a Knife Through the Molar Screaming. The pain from this trigeminal neuralgia (TN) attack was worse than any previous attack. And there have been aplenty. I couldn’t function! But boy could I scream. It was 8 a.m. and I was stirring awake. My tongue merely touched one of the bottom molars on the…
May 21, 2021 Columns by John Connor Introducing My ‘MS Popeye-Spinach Hypothesis’ For any younger readers, and by that I’m guessing 45 and under, may I present the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man. He got himself out of scrapes by downing a can of spinach, which supercharged his muscles. There was none of that nonsense of de-stalking raw young leaves…
April 23, 2021 Columns by John Connor My Own ‘Left Hand of Darkness’ I was listening to a BBC podcast recently titled “The Sinister Hand,” about the history of left-handers. It seems that in medieval times, left-handedness was associated with sorcery. (What wasn’t?) It was only relatively recently that left-handed children were no longer forced to write right-handed ā sometimes even…
April 16, 2021 Columns by John Connor An Upbeat MS Column for You Lucky People The trouble with a degenerative disease is that things only get worse. In the long-gone days of my youth, I somehow wrangled myself into being an arts critic. Wizened journalists imparted the lore that a bad show was much easier to write than a rave. Satirical barbs are far more…
February 26, 2021 Columns by John Connor After a Full Dose of Steroids, I’m Still a Little Old Man at 63 “Let’s go for a walk,” my wife, Jane, chirpily suggested. This was a bit of a nightmare. I had to put on trousers. I perhaps cheekily get away with only wearing an apron all day. It makes going to the bathroom so much easier. (A little later in the day…
February 12, 2021 Columns by John Connor Britain Leads the World in Two Types of Jabbing I was 6 years old when British boxer Henry Cooper knocked Cassius Clay on his bottom. (It was that long ago, folks ā 1963. This was before Clay’s religious conversion and consequent name change to Muhammad Ali.) Unfortunately, Clay was literally saved by the bell. I remember dashing around…
February 5, 2021 Columns by John Connor Feeling on Top of Things Meant I Nearly Ended Up on My Bottom Would I jinx it? In last week’s column “How Iām Staying on Top of MSā Many āGifts,'” I wrote about being on top of all my MS-induced ancillary symptoms. Wendy, one of my two readers, pointed out that she didn’t want to jinx me. The trouble was that I’d…
January 29, 2021 Columns by John Connor How I’m Staying on Top of MS’ Many ‘Gifts’ When I was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009, my first question to my neurologist was, “Will I end up in a wheelchair?” She patted this question back with the generic, “You may, but no one knows the course that anyone’s MS might take.” Later, I learned that late-onset…
January 8, 2021 Columns by John Connor Sorry, This Is Not About New Year’s Resolutions. Get Over It! Now I know what it is like to write like Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. Not because I have their talent (if only), but due to the inescapable fact that I’m so high that the children’s Christmas kites flapping in the park are far below me! Oh, it turns…
August 21, 2020 Columns by John Connor ‘Apocalypse Now’: I Love the Smell of Hashish in the Morning Helicopters were whirling in my brain. Turns out, it was a solitary police one. Though it was another hot night, my wife closed my windows in case of a prowler. I’m on the ground floor, after all. It was a dark moment in my life. Another relapse had struck…
July 31, 2020 Columns by John Connor The Mouth That Roared and Roared Strap in: This is not going to be a fun one. Even less so for me ā though I’m writing this under the sort of drug load that Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson would have been proud of! Not for fun (or dependence!) but for survival. “Since TNĀ is…
June 19, 2020 Columns by John Connor All Quiet on the MS Front 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.”…
October 3, 2019 Columns by Tamara Sellman Need to Know: How to Manage MS Pain Editor’s note: “Need to Knowā is a series inspired by common forum questions and comments from readers. Have a comment or question about MS? Visit our forum. This week’s question is inspired by the forum topicĀ “Do you use pain meds to get through day to day life?” from…
August 8, 2019 Columns by Jennifer (Jenn) Powell My Pain Is Real ā Don’t Deny Me Relief I am quite outspoken. I have no problem voicing my opinion or needs ā or so I thought. An exchange this morning left me speechless. While my head was swimming with semi-intelligible responses, I was rendered mute. Let me just say that I have been on pain medication for…
April 24, 2019 Columns by guest columnist The ‘Rare but Serious Side Effect’ that Could Have Killed My Sister Editor’s note:Ā This is a guest column byĀ Kristin Hardy, who was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis in 2002. Her sister Margaret was diagnosed the same year with relapsing-remitting MS, complicated by trigeminal neuralgia. You are invited to follow Kristinās blog at www.hackmyms.com. ***…
March 21, 2019 Columns by Tamara Sellman Need to Know: Why Do I Have Facial Pain? Editor’s note: “Need to Know” is a series inspired by common forum questions and comments from readers. Have a comment or question about MS? Visit our forum. This week’s question is inspired by the forum topicĀ “What is Trigeminal Neuralgia?” from May 2, 2018. What causes…
January 4, 2019 Columns by John Connor What a Relief! New year, new beginnings ā not a chance. Theresa May still has Brexit as her waking and sleeping nightmare, and I’m still battling urinary tract infections (UTIs). Over the last few years, I’ve probably written about this more than anything else; it’s the one thing the medical establishment…
October 5, 2018 Columns by John Connor Don’t Turn Anything Down! At the start of all of this, when I was laid low in the hospital by what turned out to be sclerosis, I was visited by my mate Nigel. He is the king of sclerosis (I’ve written about our “ill” starred bromance in this column)Ā and he offered this…
April 27, 2018 Columns by John Connor Tricks of the Trade I saw my neurologist a few weeks ago for what was effectively an emergency meeting. I’d had the customary two rounds of Lemtrada (alemtuzumab) and still had a relapse. We discussed weighty subjects and there seemed,Ā surprisingly, to still be some hope. It depends on the outcome of an MRI;…
February 23, 2018 Columns by John Connor What’s Going On? Something is! I had to be carted off to the hospital in an ambulance on Thursday of last week. It was either an infection my home-visiting doctor couldn’t spotĀ or the dreaded relapse. She couldn’t diagnose any illness. At the hospital, they used the words “atypical infection.” One of…