The phrase "and contends with a" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing a struggle or challenge faced by someone or something in relation to a specific issue or opponent.
Example: "The athlete trains rigorously and contends with a fierce competitor in every match."
Alternatives: "and struggles against a" or "and battles with a".
These days, Ms. Barrett says, she occasionally gets dizzy spells and contends with a partial loss of hearing in one ear.
As he moves away from his surrogate mother (if panic-dialing her often) and contends with a patriarchal problem (the plot thickens, slightly), Tim travels a classic path of enlightenment that runs parallel with our own understanding of him.
Her exertions and the image of a threshold strongly recalled "Errand Into the Maze," Martha Graham's often revived work of 1947 about a questing woman who ventures into a labyrinth and contends with a beast akin to the mythological monster known as the Minotaur.
Along the way, he alternately befriended and did battle with the native peoples he called "Indians," was twice shipwrecked and contended with a rogue's gallery of Spanish rebels and mutineers.
There's not a moment in this real-time thriller that doesn't take place off a laptop screen, as high-school friends video-conference with each other and contend with a glitchy, unknown user known as "Billie227".
When Siglufjordur, a small mountain town in northern Iceland, was hit by a series of storms last summer, construction workers clearing a roadway soon found themselves dodging mudslides and contending with a flooded river.
There are the predictable ones such as dealing with sick people and their families, making clinical decisions and plans for patients, and contending with a busy workload in a crowded space with finite resources trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
He could also benefit from what some Republicans see as a modest vein of Bush nostalgia, marked by a video shown at the Republican National Convention about his father, who is 88 and contending with a form of Parkinson's disease and declining health.
Obama's health care legislation will get between you and your doctor, force you to pay higher taxes and, while failing to lengthen your life, compel you to spend much, much more of it filling out forms, standing in lines and contending with a new bureaucracy that will make the U.S. Postal Service seem a very model of efficiency.
The trial began on the second anniversary of a devastating earthquake that struck the central Italian city of L'Aquila, killing nearly 300 people, and as Italy contends with a stagnant economy.
Dismantling white supremacy successfully requires us to recognize and contend with its role as a load-bearing wall in the structure of our democratic order.
