UPRIGHT & ONWARDS….ANYWAY BUT DOWNWARDS…MAY 2010

Life these days is spent in a more UPRIGHT position. Unless you have experienced a disability which has necessitated using a wheelchair, you cannot begin to realise and appreciate just how wonderful and liberating it is to be able to STAND, maybe not evenly balanced and maybe not for more than a couple of mins, but just to stand and be upright. Another moment of sheer bliss.

The wheelchair is kept in the back of the car these days as I never know when I have to say ‘sorry, can’t do it today’, but I AM striving to be up on my own legs/hips as much as possible.  IKEA is still one of my best places to shop – they have available wheelchairs for the use of, though being of a slight build and only 5′ tall their chairs are too heavy for me and I prefer to use my own wheelchair as I can get myself around fairly quickly (hence the broken rib a month after I broke the hip!).

My days are still not all good ones, some are still bloody awful.  Days when I can use the leg/hip and days when it has to be rested completely and days when I cry for no reason and feel a complete waste of space – but these days pass.  I know I push myself too far, to go through the pain, but a lot of this is to simply satisfy other peoples opinions, but sometimes I can’t get through that barrier even to please them  These are the people who consider themselves either members of the medical profession and they tell you that ‘they say you have to be up and moving around i.e. 4 weeks after breaking a hip and the day after breaking a rib?  Or the keep fit brigade who insist on telling you about exercising….excuse me, isn’t that something the consultant should be telling me. Neither of these groups ever listen to you and what you are trying to say and they even make their comments ‘over you’ to someone standing near.  These ‘well intentioned’ (HA!) people  know nothing about me, what my pain tolerance is, what I have done and what I have been told officially, they know nothing of the fact that I have myself worked on a Surgical Ward and also in an Operating Theatre and I know precisely what had happened and what the prognosis is. They know nothing of that fact that I prefer to let my own body advise me as it surely knows what it needs. The ONLY thing these people produce is rather dangerous advice and the ability to deliver guilt.

I mentioned before that for the next 4 years I have to take a weekly dose of strong calcium.  Before I decided to take this, I did my own research into the pros and cons of the substance which seemed long term to be fine. But one aspect NOT mentioned was that it would send me to sleep!! Sometimes I sleep most of the day after I have taken it! Got it sussed now though…get up in the middle of the night, take it and go back to sleep, waking up then at a decent time.