The title is no accident. When a trapdoor opened in Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s life – the abrupt diagnosis, in his 40s, of multiple sclerosis – he couldn’t help thinking of Gregor in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a young man who’s changed into a giant beetle, imprisoned in bed, legs waving feebly in the air. It was a shuffling in his legs that had made Douglas-Fairhurst seek medical advice – and now a neurologist confirmed the worst.
There are two types of MS, he was told: relapsing remitting and (more serious) primary progressive. He had the latter, with no effective treatment, it seemed, let alone a cure: “My body was like a dying coral reef.” Within weeks, he deteriorated further – had blurred vision for an hour when he woke up, fell over in the street by the Bodleian Library, felt electric shocks tasering his spine if he bent his neck. His body was uncoupling from him. He’d entered the kingdom of the sick.
