It’s easy for me, relatively speaking. I’m living my illness. I’m at the centre of my world of disability, illness, doctors, tests and hospitals. I get on and do the best I can each and every day; I deal with the pain, nausea, dislocating joints, wonky autonomic nervous system, exhaustion and fragility. I live it
Read More ...The D Word
Although this is written in the present tense, I wrote this in the spring of 2015. It didn’t feel right to post it until the dark clouds had started to lift… Well, 26/27 on the depression scale. Not quite full marks, but not far off. As I sat with my doctor discussing this score, I
Read More ...2016 Yearly Forecast
Message for 2016 It’s hard to look ahead to the coming year without looking back over the previous twelve months as this gives us a reference point and a sense of context. 2015 has unquestionably been a challenging and difficult year for a great many souls as we have felt wave after wave crashing in
Read More ...The Year I Broke
This year I’ve fallen apart. Everything I once held dear has been torn down and ripped away. My beliefs have been shattered, my sense of spiritual connection has disintegrated and turned to dust, and my physical self has crumbled with ill-health and disability. The story of my life unravelled as everything fell apart; I broke.
Read More ...Rant…
To the man on the lift who thought his shopping trolley should take preference to my crutches – barging one out from under me as it was in his way. To the woman on the bus who felt her overly large handbag should take priority for the spare seat leaving me standing on my crutches
Read More ...Dear Junior Doctor
Dear Junior Doctor, This is a message to all the doctors involved in the current dispute over changes to your contracts. As a career sick person and professional patient (and no, I’m not proud of that), I have had the privilege to be cared for by a great many junior doctors. Strangely I’ve never considered
Read More ...Identity Crisis
My thumb doesn’t know how to be a thumb anymore. It feels awkward and doesn’t know how to sit with the rest of my hand. It trembles, quivers and spasms; its confidence has taken a tumble, and it feels almost alien to the rest of me. It’s either burning hot or burning cold, and it
Read More ...Embracing Our Fragility
It’s not always easy to accept being the author of one’s own life, after all, that means taking responsibility for choices, decisions and paths followed. It also means taking responsibility for our unlived lives as well: those choices we didn’t make and those paths we didn’t walk. Life is rarely a case of either/or as
Read More ...CRPS – My Embuggerance (Part 2)
A friend once said ‘CRPS? Oh, you should call it CRaP for short’ giggling at her attempt at humour. Trouble is crap makes it sound like a niggly little irritation. Yet, it’s an embuggerance of fairly epic proportion. It’s pushed my many other conditions into the background as it’s an attention seeking little madam, constantly
Read More ...CRPS – My Embuggerance (Part 1)
Perhaps the most challenging of my conditions is CRPS – Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (previously known as RSD). Most people haven’t heard of it nor have most doctors, and, as a result it’s missed, misdiagnosed or dismissed a great deal. CRPS sounds fairly innocuous but it has the tenacity of a rabid ankle-biting terrier that
Read More ...