Ocrevus checklist

I’ve just had part 1 of my initial Ocrevus infusion. Beforehand, I asked the MS community on Twitter for their top tips for infusion day and I thought I’d combine them with my observations so that I can share them here. This may be useful for new Ocrevus patients, and I’ll also refer to them

The brutal brilliance of bladder Botox

I’m away on holiday for a couple of weeks soon and this means taking two boxes of urinary catheters plus an extra box just to cover all eventualities. And that’ll take up a considerable amount of space in the case. Recent experience bears me out. A couple of years ago, we spent four weeks travelling

It’s been a while..

I knew I hadn’t updated this blog for ages but I didn’t realise the last time I had anything to say was September 2015. I’ve been busy caring for an elderly relative (now in residential care) and editing a poetry journal (now resigned), so I’ve either been exhausted or lacking the will and free time

Making lemonade #2

Way back when I started secondary school, a rumour went around that all the boys would need a medical during the first term. This would involve a procedure where a nurse would hold our testicles while we coughed. This never happened, of course, but a part of me believed it. It made the eleven year

Making lemonade

“To make lemonade out of the lemons life throws at you, you sometimes have to strangle kittens.” Somebody tweeted that recently. Oh wait!… It was me! I tweeted it! Why? Because to aid a restful night’s sleep and to stop myself getting urinary infections, I will now have to self-catheterise every day, at least once

Alcohol

It has been amended since, but I once laughed at a section in the MS Society publication “What is MS?” which described potential problems when drinking alcohol.* The problems highlighted included balance, bladder control, slurred speech and double-vision. “So how do I know when I’m getting drunk then?” I thought. Last week I had a

Life with MS – Part One – Symptoms

I don’t want to come over all “woe is me” because there are plenty of people out there on the internet trying to out-do each other with their bad symptoms and there are many others with MS who have it much worse than I do (my old neighbour who also has MS, doesn’t recognise me