Under the radar

When I reached the age of thirty, I was helping my father-in-law do some gardening when I bent over to pick up a leaf and I felt a twang somewhere in my lumbar region. This twang put me completely out-of-action for a week or so afterwards. My GP had simply smiled and said, “welcome to

The Magical Brain

Blimey, this feels a bit like a newsletter, but I think there’s a few updates and loose ends on recent posts to tie up, so here goes: Fampridine I have my first official batch of fampridine to help with my mobility. As mentioned before, I hadn’t really noticed how much it was helping me walk

Postcard from Osteoporopolis

Warning: Tired travel analogies may continue to be employed in this post. “I know the C word and the F word. The C word is cor blimey, and the F word is flippin’ ‘eck” – Rat, lead singer of Chesterfield based punk band The Bland on stage at the Take Two club, Attercliffe c.1988 It’s

A postcard from Limboland

A month ago, if you asked me how tall I was, I’d say I was a six footer. It seems I’m not. I’m a five-foot-ten-and-a-half short-arse apparently, so essentially I’ve lost an inch and a half (4cm) in height. Even if you consider I may have always rounded up by half an inch, and I

The aftermath

Warning: this post contains experience of intense pain and some details of sensitive medical procedures. Sometimes I think of my MS as a monster. A monster who is always there tugging at my neck, poking me in the back, tripping me up or holding my ankles like a deadweight. As a child of the ‘70s,

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

Relapse

Just thought I’d let y’all know that I had a relapse in the last couple of months. It mainly involved vertigo and dizziness, so I spent a good couple of weeks crashing into things, nearly falling over, feeling nauseous and actually vomiting a few times. It also involved some fatigue, L’Hermitte’s and a not unpleasant hot

MS Trust open door

open door is the quarterly newsletter from the MS Trust. It largely reports on research results and the like, but despite this, is very readable. The current issue (just arrived) deals with posture, depression, misleading stem cell treatments and the impact of progressive MS on family life amongst other things. Items that caught my eye:

The eyes (will) have it

I have been waiting for two months for the letter deferring me to my local hospital eye dept. (I need glasses to correct my doublevision). I chased my neurologist up over the phone today. My Uber-Neurologist’s secretary apologised on behalf of the consultant (previously referred to as Dr Somebodyorother) who saw me, explaining that they

One year on …

Today is the first anniversary of my diagnosis (see MS History – part two). Health professional bodycount so far. Starting with the first GP visit last year, the bodycount is as follows GPs 4 Practice Nurses 2 MS nurse 1 Ward nurse 1 Occupational Health nurse 1 Phlebotomists 6 (estimate) Physiotherapists 1 Neurologists 5 Neuro-psychologists