IDLEMILD - Life’s Rich Pageant While On Bedrest

Mar '26 For the past ten years, to the present day, I have spent all of this time with some timescale of bed rest required in my day from the effects of pressure sores. Pressure sores are the bane of the wheelchair users life. You are doing very well to avoid them at least once in your life. They are not to be treated lightly as my own testimony should confirm. In 2016, I was working in an office in Lochgilphead for the Local Authority. I was experiencing issues with spasm in my back, often causing intense spells of excruciating pain. I was being sent home from work early on a regular basis while I awaited the results of neurological investigation. I was experiencing a level of discomfort which caused me to shuffle and fidget regularly in my wheelchair as I attempted to settle a regular, pin prickly, burning sensation in my lower back. One morning I woke up with a bloody stain apparent on my bedsheet. I thought nothing much of it and went off to work. Over a spell of a ...

I have written as a form of therapy since the early days of coming to terms with being physically disabled following spinal surgery in late autumn of 2006.  I have never written anything since with certainty and I have learned over 20 years that nothing is final with my injury, I struggle with convincing myself that this is what I'm really trying to say. Some occasions there just aren't the words. But, every so often, writing can ease my mind of a few fears and lift the confusion in my head, a little.  I really enjoy the process of writing. Most of the time it amounts to very little at all being clarified but, once in a while, it can lead to the jackpot prize of some sense of settlement and acceptance. As long as I have been in a wheelchair, friends and family have insisted my story is a book in the making. I have been attempting to rise to what I see as a challenge and one, with my circumstances, I can get fully behind. Bed rest allows for quiet contemplation and is the ideal...

We were always destined to meet of course. To be fair, I was pushing it, getting to the age of 34. My spina bifida decided enough was enough and it was time on that icy morning in Aberdeen in late 2005 for it to finally reveal itself - "I've been expecting you! What took us so long to get acquainted?"  I was never the best walking on ice. My footwear choice was never the best for the conditions. It was only a couple of minutes from my flat to the bus stop. I wasn't even sure if the buses were running. I usually heard them from my flat but I couldn't say if i'd heard one or not this morning.  My technique for walking on ice was to waddle like a penguin, which latterly the NHS has adopted as official advice. My problem though was that I was always so bloody tense. I always felt it was inevitable I would come a cropper. I walked slowly but, such was my level of fear, I was sweating from the exertion and my mental anguish. I was overcompensating for every mino...

I had focus only for the clock facing me in my bed, on every hour passing through the night, as the ward slept. I was steadfast in my slightly hysterical belief that staying awake would slow down time and delay my inevitable day with the surgeon's scalpel dawning .   Indeed, i had not slept one wink and time was typically unmoved by my plight to relentlessly march on, and It was still all too soon, despite my best efforts, finding myself being moved in whispers and long silences by the hospital porters, and so unceremoniously i felt for something so seismic, out of the ward and brought in to surgery on the morning of Thursday 16th November 2006.  Another reason for my lack of sleep was because I was still reeling after undergoing an unexpected procedure in the hours following my admission the day before. By late afternoon on the Wednesday I knew what I really wanted more than anything was to be able to duck out of the following days operation. The scale of eve...

I traveled to Glasgow from Aberdeen lying flat on a stretcher in the back of a patient transfer vehicle. I was accompanied by a woman in a wheelchair attending an outpatient appointment at the Spinal Injuries Unit that same day. She had been there as an in patient already and I asked her lots of questions about the environment and her experience to which she was very complimentary. I felt more relaxed certainly for speaking to her and we were both surprised entering the city of Glasgow as quickly as we felt we had. My familiarity with my home town brought additional comfort. I had been having quite a tranquil time of things since my surgery. I had spent almost a month in the ward in Aberdeen waiting for a bed to become available in Glasgow. That time was spent in a single room with books, magazines, music and movies to entertain myself with, in between visitors and casual trips to the gym.  I had been enjoying having my own room and It was as close as I have ever come t...

My last night as a patient of the Spinal Injuries Unit there was a little celebration among the patients for me. Pizza was ordered in and while I was grateful for the send off, and for the last six months of achieving and camaraderie, it was also undoubtedly the case that I was in too bewildered a state to allow myself to believe that, like everyone was telling me, it would all be alright. Relaxed, I was not. The spinal injuries unit had proved to be a sanctuary. In essence, my existence since my surgery had all been contained within a sort of safe little commune with everyone being granted specialist attention which attempted to educate each of us on how to navigate and negotiate the likely scenarios which await when the inevitable time comes to be responsible human beings again.  I had become part of a cult where no one on the outside could possibly know just what It was to be a part of such a group who had each experienced life defining injury; all pulling together o...

In the months following my discharge from the Spinal Injuries Unit I felt an inner peace which belied the magnitude of the events of the months previous. So much of life seemed familiar which brought comfort and inner confidence. I was keen to explore my surroundings and for the first time in my life I was being motivated by the gains I was clearly seeing from daily exercise. I had never felt fitter at any time in my life. It all came from pushing myself in my wheelchair everywhere. I was out on daily fact finding missions. I made it my mission to learn as much as I could about the built environment. In academic terms I knew my spinal unit experience was foundation level, general principles. In the limited time I had been a patient at the SIU, I had only scratched the surface of what I could expect to experience outside. It was up to me now following my discharge that I graduated with full Honours, as I saw it. I was never particularly academic when it was required of me. T...