UTIs

Youā€™ve got a Napoleon complex, you have, mate

I don’t have a Napoleon complex in the sense of being small. My body still spans 6 feet, though that’s only when I’m lying down; I doubt I get anywhere near 5 feet tall while seated in my wheelchair. Saint Jane (my wife) is 5-foot-2, and I now look…

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,…

A Drizzly Summer Weekend and an Antibiotic Rejection

There was a time when I’d regularly strap on two pads, stride out between English showers, and attempt to bat on the subsequently dodgy surface. That was good for the fast bowlers, except they now found themselves also slipping on the sopping grass. I sympathized with them, as I was…

MS and Boxing: Being Clever With My Pants

After last week’s column about my neurologist declaring that I now have secondary progressive MS, a certain ennui has seeped into me. While this isn’t surprising, it’s also surprising, because I’m on the mood-altering drug fluoxetine. OK, fluoxetine is a regular antidepressant, but “mood-altering” sounds so much cooler.

And the Biofilm Goes to …

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…

Under Pressure

There’s always something. The trouble with a mĆ©lange 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…

MS Pipe Dreams: Dealing with Urinary Tract Infections

I’ve been considering writing about the fun, fun world of catheters. As this column is morphing into some sort of diary, let’s deal with this week’s medical procedural drama. Welcome to UTI (urinary tract infection) week. Anyone who uses a catheter is prone to a higher incidence of…