My research group was proactive in their approach to the evolving Covid-19 pandemic. As of the 16th of March, we decided to stop all fieldwork and move into working from home for all staff and students, which was quickly followed by our University following suit. We have coordinated with the students to adjust their projects …
Over the past few weeks, even months, I have seen a lot of negative energy on the rise and understandably so. We are facing a life-changing pandemic. In Australia people are panicking and that is partly due to the effect of the virus, partly to the insecurity of jobs and the ability to provide for …
Whilst Covid-19 is another kind of flu, and it’s likely that you’ve had a coronavirus flu in the past, it is significantly more serious than what you would consider the seasonal flu. The seasonal flu typically kills 0.1% of those it infects each year, Covid-19 is currently killing around 1% of those it is infecting, …
Shortly after the arrival of our son, my Partner, Eliza, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For the previous few months I had noticed that she was having difficulty walking straight, would lose her balance at random in the hallway. Vertigo was our laymen diagnosis. When it didn’t go away, and instead started to get worse, …
When I started disease modifying drugs to control my multiple sclerosis it was pretty straight-forward. I was on what is considered the easiest intro drug, Tecfidera. It’s 2 tablets a day, one in the morning and one at night, simple. But my body wasn’t responding as we had hoped and my MS was still active, …
A relapse is a scary experience. For me, I lost my ability to walk properly without falling over, hearing in my right ear, and strength in my right arm. I thought it was permanent. After about a month those symptoms abated and I could hear, lift and carry my son, open things, and walk again. …
It’s summer in Australia and it’s hot. On any sunny day you can see the sweat beading on the brows of colleagues, the damp patches in the middle of back on shirts, everyone gets generally icky. For people with MS, the heat can make their daily experience even worse by exacerbating symptoms, rendering some people …
One of the big things I advocate is to take control of the things that are within your control. With a disease like multiple sclerosis we can’t control when our relapses happen, nor how they will affect us. What we can control are other aspects of our health that are known to have negative impacts …
Researchers at McGill University in Canada have demonstrated a link between the amount of methionine in a diet and the development and progression of multiple sclerosis, having implications for not only MS but other auto-immune diseases.
There are some hard truths in life, the biggest, and simplest, is that life is hard. This should not come as a shocking revelation. I would go so far as to say that at times you have protested as to how hard life is, either to you, or to what it is “doing” to your …