IDLEMILD - Life’s Rich Pageant While On Bedrest

*This post was originally published on Facebook on Wednesday 5th June 2024* Off the back of yesterday's Bicycle post I received a couple of messages asking about my spina bifida. It's a strange old thing. I'll try to explain it in the most basic way I can. It's true that although I was born with it, it more or less left me alone for more than thirty years. You wouldn't have known to look at me that I was born with a disability. I was born with a spinal cord which hadn't fully formed. Spina bifida means 'split spine'. I had a gap at the base of my spine which disrupts the messaging carried from the brain and down the spinal cord. Its cause is still disputed - a folic acid deficiency is the most common reason given. It attacks the nervous system and tends to disable the function below the level of injury. In my case I really should have been born without any ability to walk and most likely complications with bowel and bladder function. My spina...

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 had been foundation level, general principles. In the limited time I had been a patient there 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. Time to take the bull by the horns. I was experiencing life now n...

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 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 and I was part of a cult where no one on the outside could possibly know just what It was to be a part of a group all pulling together over many months, for the one extraordinary goal.  The thing was that this cult did not require any Waco style armed siege to break out of. There was no David Koresh keeping us against our will. It almost felt like it was too easy to leave and as I sat with my peers that final night, there w...

I came down to Glasgow from Aberdeen 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 I was about to become a patient of.  I was nervous and irritated lying on my back for the 3 hour journey but she was chatty and we spoke about how we sustained our injuries and, as she had already been a patient of the spinal injuries unit, the ins and outs of life there, although I'm not sure I took any of this in given the amount of anxiety I was experiencing on the way. After a month in the hospital in Aberdeen I was attempting to savour every moment of being out on the open road again while dreading every mile we got closer to Glasgow. I couldn't see a thing outside from my bed I was strapped on to. The journey seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye. I had been having quite a tranquil time of things since my surgery. I had spent almost a month in the ward in A...

I had focussed on every hour passing through the night on the clock which faced me in my hospital bed as time ticked towards my date with the surgeon's scalpel.  I did not sleep before it was time to be moved out of the ward and brought in to surgery on the morning of the 18th November 2006. It was still dark outside and the rest of the ward still slept as I was moved in whispers and long silences. It was a Thursday morning. The reason for my lack of sleep was as much to do with the day before as the day itself.  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. On Wednesday afternoon I had just unexpectedly been put through a lengthy ordeal involving a procedure to attach (technical term eluding me!) 'electrodes', leading from various strategic points of my brain, to 'trigger' points on both legs - a form of insurance for the surgeon to reduce the risk of cutting...

The date of my spinal surgery is an anniversary I have come to know and loathe every year since November 18th 2006. I still really struggle. But, I can only guess at the date the incident which led to my surgery took place. Even the year is vague. We could be going back as far as late 2004 to early 2005 for reasons I'll explain.  It's a winter's morning in Aberdeen. It has been snowing for days and although there's been a partial thaw, the remnants make for tricky underfoot conditions especially first thing in the morning following sub zero temperatures overnight.  I have hated days like this all of my life. I have never the right shoes for days like this. I have came a cropper before and it's a mixture of cold and nerves which make me shiver on days like this.  I'm opening the shop that morning so I'm out early ahead of time of the regular commute, first up and out it seems. My street is long and winding. It is on a main bus route and while I wo...

I have written as a form of therapy since the days following my discharge from hospital in 2006. I have never written anything since with any form of certainty but every so often it can ease my mind and a few fears a little.  I don't write from or about fear, it's mostly from a permanent state of inner confusion and mostly the writing is in a sense mumbo jumbo which I find myself often throwing away while thinking I think too much.  I really enjoy the process of writing though and continue to persevere. I don't really know what I gain from it other than piling more confusion on top of confusion. 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 in all that time. I have attempted to put the words together in an order that might just make me believe (in myself!) that this is something I am capable of and not just some vanity project and to make it wo...