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Part 2.... Chapter 12....

20/1/2017

Evening thoughts. It is 11.46pm and as tired as I maybe I must write about today’s completely different, amazing, awesome and testing time of my own determination with new abilities to learn.
It’s been a long and interesting day. The first hard day in which I had fun with my new whole body experience and new life existence.

The sun’s rays woke me up by bursting through the window early this morning carrying with it the welcoming alarm call from the seagulls before the rattling tea trolley was to arrive. Well, I was expecting the rattling tea trolley but it arrived in more of a silent mode this morning because quirky nursey is off for a couple of days.… Ha, there is a god after all, my thoughts announced as the tea and coffee was being served almost in silence. With no radio blasting the tiny little hairs in my ears. I knew it was going to be a good day from that moment.

As usual I was the last person to be helped having a bed bath and get dressed ready for the day. I asked to be the last because I don’t like being rushed. Rookwood maybe run like a boot camp prison but I’m not going to be rushed by any able-bodied nurse or able-bodied anyone at any time of the day. Not now not ever.

Today was my first learning day of being an active independent paraplegic. The first early learning part was how people help wash and dress me which involves the bending, lifting and parting of my legs, and rolling from side to side. Holding the arm of each nurse who then pull me to the sit up position so one can wash and dry my back. Once done its fasten up the bra time and pop arms through the sleeves of whatever top I’ll be wearing.

Once the body has been washed and moisturiser applied, they help me get strapped into a binder for back support, and a pair of white surgical stockings are rolled on to my legs to help prevent blood clots. Of all the colours, why white??? I don’t wear or like white bras with matching pants and now I must wear thick white stockings, ew. My legs look like two thin sticks of chalk. How unsexy, very unsexy…. But then again, there is a Foot Fetish demand out there and little feet in white are a top seller lol….

Anyway, back to the way things are done now. A leg bag is attached to my catheter then strapped to my leg just under the knee. Once all that is done, one by one they then lift my legs so my knee bends enough for my foot to slip into the trouser leg. Once it’s in and the trousers are pulled above my knees, I’m rolled over from side to side for them to be pulled up and over my fatless bony ass.

Such a HUGE change to my morning wake up and get ready for the day routine. It’s so hard physically, even harder and more of a mental challenge and an emotional degrading feeling, with others touching, washing and dressing me.

I feel no contact from their hands, no mind connection with my own body. My eyes dart around a thousand miles an hour watching every move the nurses make. It’s like I’m studying intensely where they put their hands. How they move them all over my body, and for how long if they’re hands are stationary and still on me. God, even writing this makes me think I’m getting paranoid. But what I can see but not feel is something that fills my mind with apprehension. Even though I don’t mentally feel nervous or anxious. It’s just going to take time for me to get used to this.

Then to finish it all off I must wear a frame around my torso on the outside of my clothes, to keep me upright and support my position and posture the best it can. While my brain takes hold of all these new actions, I’m telling myself there is a meaning to all of this. The meaning of achieving a goal. The meaning of a result at the end. But most of all it’s a meaning with a purpose for still being alive. And my next introduction to this is a wheelchair and it’s all about my new sitting experience….

Ok, I had been fed and watered. Washed, dressed and scaffolded. The night before they had been looking for a child size wheelchair as I’m so small, weighting in at about 7st. Once the chair was found it was parked at the end of my bed looking at me.

It’s nothing special, just the bog standard black NHS wheelchair that has been the virgin seat for many a paraplegic over its life time here at Rookwood. Now it’s my turn. Today was the day it became my vehicle of transport. First needed was the hoist to pick me up from the bed and plonk me down and in to my new means of mobility. My new legs.

Even that in its self was again something new for me. Strapped in a sling that was then anchored to the hoist. With the press of a button I was squashed together like a sandwich and transferred over to the chair and gently guided into the sitting position by the nurses. Greeted by a small round of applause from my fellow disabled inmates. The feeling of levitation is the only way I can describe it really…. Most bizarre, but with the best feeling alive moment since the 16th July 2007. A photo had to be taken ;-)

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Part 2.... Chapter 11....

13/1/2017

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I have spent the past five days, and I shall explain in nautical terms as I’m lying on an air mattress, that I’ve been rolling from port to starboard left and right, respectively. Every day a different day…. but…. every day a different shit…. and every day a different lighter me.

I’m starting to feel like a new me. But it’s a new me having someone daily insert their finger up my jacksie, pushing in the suppository without me noticing a god dam thing. It is definitely, a new me. Not something I would have gone for myself if the choice was offered, but as it wasn’t I guess I’ll have to be grateful and deal with it. NOT…. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!
I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry with that statement for many different reasons lol….
But I piss in a bag and shit on the bed, and I never saw that one coming. It is a Fetish for a lot of people out there but not for me. While I’m getting used to my new physical adjustments I wonder what delights await for me in the forthcoming weeks, months and years ahead.

I have asked several nurses when will I be able to sit up and lay on my back. I can’t take much more of this side to side 24/7 lay and deliver lark. I can’t seem to shake off the “embracement” either.
Another word with meaning of feeling I never had occupying my daily thinking before now and what a highly sensitive word with feeling it is. It’s something I hide and I think I wear the mask well, but inside, my self-awareness is bigger than the universe. It feels like all eyes are on me, of which they obviously aren’t. There are a few nurses waiting for my signal to come over, lift the sheet and see if the output has arrived. Anyway, a shit a day keeps the doctor away so it’s all good progress in the right direction, red faced or not…. This is just the start.

There hasn’t been much to report and share with paper and pen for the last two days apart from the ship has docked. I ain’t swaying from side to side anymore and all is now under control allowing me to lay on my back and start having full conversations with the rest of the inmates. And tomorrow I will be transferred via a hoist and plonked into my first wheel chair.
After that first attempt of sitting in a chair at Morriston Hospital for a short while, I can’t wait to get out of bed and start sitting upright with more mobility and adventure. Adventure, hahaaaa, yeah right.

I don’t see my partner and daughter as much now that I’m in Rookwood. Even though Cardiff isn’t that far from Swansea, traffic rush hour is a nightmare and they both have to keep up with the businesses. Plus, my daughter has her apprenticeship to concentrate on.

Being on my own more is helping me come to terms with my life now as a Paraplegic. Never heard that word before I became one. I knew the word paralysed and just took it as meaning someone unable to walk. I guess most of us think that through ignorance to a degree, and I suppose if we don’t know of anyone paralysed or disabled in anyway, we just go about our day in our own merry way. Disability is never going to pop into our mind of wonder, while we float along in our own orb.

I have excepted the fact that I’ll never walk again but I will never except that notion of not being able to work, play and rest. That’s my thinking for now. I’m very optimistic about my future planning even if it’s make believe, just to myself for now….

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Part 2.... Chapter 10

6/1/2017

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Oh, my, fuking, God!!! And everyone else’s.
I was woken up with sounds that made me think I was waking up on a train. With a runaway tea trolley being chased by an over sniffed energised enthusiastic speed addict. Followed by blasting tunes from the radio, which happened to be on the floor with its back against one of the centre pillars opposite my bed…. Fuking Hell Mun!....
It’s seven thirty in the fuking morning and I got to put up with this shite, are you fuking joking with me Rookwood.

As I started to think who the fuk this morning star was, she poked her head through the curtains and loudly vocalized, “Good Morning, cuppa tea, coffee?”, whilst she drew back the curtain. Before her hand had time to let go of its holding I told her to draw it back and it doesn’t get pulled open again until I’m ready.

I opted for a coffee and when she returned I asked her where all the noise came from and she said with a smile, "The tea trolley". I laughed, and notified her it sounded more like it was being pushed on a fast train not on the smooth hospital floor. She stated it was her fast walking and she couldn’t stop the cups and saucers jangling, clinking and clanking together. I concurred. Then stated back that the sound didn’t need to be so rushed, and that the invasion on waking up ears joined by the loud morning disco on the radio at 7.30 am in the morning, doesn’t help one like me apricate the start of her fuking day.
Her reply wasn’t of any concern to me as mine was to her, she just carried on serving the morning caffeine hit stimulant to the next victim.

I was right to call us inmates.
A capricious situation with me can be as volatile as a volcano fit and ready to blow. Spit out its red hot lava as far as its energy and power will permit. If I must be woken up every morning by the squeaky, in much need of oil, trolley wheels transporting clanking cups, and a blasting fuking radio. It’s going to be a very unpredictable stay with me here. Especially with a nurse who seems to think she’s quirky.

For me, all day today I have spent my time rolling from my left side to my right. Letting all systems go. I’ve had a few small conversations with the women on the ward and a few with the nurses. In general it’s been a boring dragging around the clock kind of day. Visitors coming and going, patients checking their weekly rota schedules then off they roll to their next class.

The food here is better than Morriston Hospital’s I’ll give it that, but it ain’t Michelin standard either ;-). Its bearable on a palate that can’t really taste so I guess anything will pass as tolerable.

More tolerable than my mines thoughts tho. My thinking of what and how I’ve landed here in this situation still bothers my thinking every night when I’m looking out at all the “disabled” bodies laying still trying to sleep.

My partner’s distant allurement is a temptation to question.
Questions my mind still doesn’t understand the reason for the wanting to ask. It’s a pull I cannot wheedle him into by means of cross reference to what he has already said. But his answers just aren’t sitting well with comfort and reassurance in my brain. Even though I can't and don't remember what happened myself. Is it wrong for me to say he seems to be coming across with sweet talk? I don’t know why I’m thinking this, but something deep in the creases of my brain are stirring something. His presence with the lines on his face and less sparkle in his eyes seem different and distant when I ask him if he’s ok. The talks of change to our future are all started by me, with his agreement on anything and everything I suggest. Just like before.

Again, I’m crying…. I need Aphrodite the Goddess of love and passion to shower herself upon him and the Goddess Fortuna to explain my fate. Before my next stage appearance with him is received with no applause….

It's another new day tomorrow, time to sleep now and get ready to salute the dawns rays, with energy, determination and smiles ;-) x

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Part 2.... Chapter 12....

﻿Part 2.... Chapter 11....

﻿Part 2.... Chapter 10

Part 2.... Chapter 11....

Part 2.... Chapter 10