How to manage your illness with Open Source Software.

I was recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. The physical aspect of this illness is not that bad for me, but the management of jobs, appointments, injections etc. is a pain in the arse. On top of coming to terms with what is happening to you, you are constantly trying to remember what you have to do next. Because an illness like MS affects the brain and so does the medication you have to take. So, if you are like me and are juggling three jobs and the load of appointments with doctors and your injections, you need help.

Of course I could always employ my girlfriend as my secretary to handle that task, but that wouldn't be too nice, I think. And I don't want to be treated like dead wood. There are basically four things that are very important:

• Shots ready? I always have to have my interferon shot vials ready, so that means a new prescription every four weeks.
• When to inject? Monday, Wednesday and Friday are injection days, 8 pm.
• Gulp. I take dietary supplements to support the healing of the lesions in my brain and for prophylaxis. That means 9 pills a day. Not really my favourite, but what can I do?
• Doctor, Doctor, give me the news! I hope that no one reading this has MS, but if you have an illness like me there will be visits to clinics and doctors galore. Even if it is a nice, very good looking doctor like in my case, it still is a doctors appointment and one tends to forget them.

As a guy who uses Linux and takes pride in what little computer knowledge I have, I wanted to employ the tool I have at hand, but never really used: Kontact.

To keep my calendar easily up to date I use Google Calendar, but only to access it to schedule appointments when I am not at home and all I have is a browser with an internet connection.

With the help of the KDE akonadi ressources for the Google tools I connect my Google Calendar with Kontact and are always up to date, even if I don't want to. The good thing is it syncs both ways - everything i change in Kontact shows up in Google Calendar and vice versa.

The install is easy:

sudo apt-get install akonadi-kde-resource-googledata

After you've opened Kontact you have to add a new calendar and for that you will have to choose the Akonadi resource. Manage Calendar Sources is your next step, and when you have clicked on Akonadi Google Calendar Resource you will have to type your username and password for Google Calendar.

That's it! Now you should have a calendar which is both accessible from work and from home.

This may be particularly important for people with an illness like me, because a connection failure on a DSL line is not unheard of and I was once a lucky winner in the connection failure lottery for weeks. And with such an abundace of important appointments to keep track of it is very reassuring to have a calendar on the net and at home that is as up to date as possible.

Thank you, developers!