“Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well.” Nicholas Bolkonski in Tolstoy’s War and Peace

With the appointment confirmation letter neatly folded into the breast pocket of my winter coat, I arrive ten minutes early at the National Neurology Hospital in Central London on a fresh Wednesday afternoon to meet with a highly regarded medical researcher and practitioner who informs me in a softly-cultivated Anglo/Indian accent that the inflammation they detected in my brain five months back was neither an isolated nor an inexplicable happening, but is instead attributable to my having developed Multiple Sclerosis.

This was not the news I had hoped for and it really kicked the chair as regards a pleasant transition into the second half of the week. I was told much of what I already know, i.e…