Jennifer Killick Jennifer Killick … ‘My immune system is in tatters’. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian As I crouch on the floor, doubled up in pain and clutching my stomach, the realisation that I am in the middle of a country park – far from civilisation and a toilet – hammers away in...
Luisa Dillner Make sure your children are up to date with vaccinations. Photograph: Alamy Whooping cough is on the rise. There were 665 reported cases from January to March, compared with 1,040 for the whole of 2011. It is a nasty disease, caused by a bacterium called Bordetella pertussis, that starts with an irritating...
Laura Barnett Suzy Norman: ‘If it had been found earlier, I might have had children.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian ‘It was the ‘are you pregnant?’ comments that did it,” says Suzy Norman. Four years ago, the former primary school teacher from east London noticed her stomach was often unusually bloated; by Christmas...
Patrick Barkham and Laura Barnett ‘Most doctors would prefer not to be resuscitated if they lost consciousness.’ Photograph: Tetra Images/Corbis “Would you like to die the way your patients do, doctor? We suspect that many of you will answer no,” thundered a recent editorial in the BMJ. Ken Murray’s essay has triggered a lively...
Esther Addley Miles Dickson, a surgeon at Spire’s hospital in Harpenden, says he never used PIP products, but has had ‘loads of emails’ from concerned former patients. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian The phone calls started in mid-December – just a handful at first, but increasing so rapidly that soon a phone line...
Kate O’Brien and Sinead King, members of the Muffia, in London in 2009. Photograph: Anna Gordon “Keep your mitts off our muffs!” “I love my vagina!” “You’ve put my chuff in a huff!” These are some of the slogans of the Muff March taking place along London’s Harley Street Saturday morning. Its aim? To...
