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Part 2.... Chapter 14....

24/2/2017

It has been non-stop since I’ve been in my chair. I’m able to sit in it all day now and have started going to physio once a day for intense training on how to transfer, sit up unaided and work on upper body muscle strength in the gym.
Working in the pub industry before my accident for many years lifting and rolling barrels of beer around the cellar, and carrying up the stairs 2/3 packs/boxes/crates of bottled drinks at a time was a piece of piss. So, in the gym my blood accelerates, pumping oxygen around the body leaving me with a tingle all over after a good session. It makes me feel alive. I love it.

My main physio instructor is a young guy, easy on the eye which is a bonus and relaxing to be with. His words are firm, straight to the point and easy to understand even if the body doesn’t want to do what he’s saying I must try to do.

Before, sitting up was something done without thinking of the action needed to executed such a position. I just sat up as straight as you would be being able-bodied. Now I’m re-learning how to sit up as a paraplegic. First practicing with the blue square gym cushions on each of my sides to keep my balance centred and one for support behind me to stop me falling back. It ain’t easy trying to keep balance up right without my torso swaying me to the left.

It all feels wrong. You know, unhuman and unsettling. My brain is having trouble excepting my new ways of mobility. I’ve only just got used to feeling like Tarzan when swinging in the hoist to land in the chair. Now like a flash in a pan I’m having to change my brain waves of absorbing new information again, to manually transfer myself from my chair.

It starts like this:

I line my wheelchair at a slight angle next to whatever I’m transferring onto
Bring my bottom to sit closer to the front of the chair
Lift legs up from under the knee, off the foot rest one by one and place feet on the floor. This is to keep my leg bones strong with my body weight.
I wear wrist support bands on both arms then place one hand on the wheelchairs arm rest and the other holding a blue plastic handle to give me extra height when I lift to transfer. That hand is then slightly stretched over to the place I’m hoping to land.
If I want to transfer to my left side I need to look and think that I’m transferring myself to my right side, and vice versa.

It’s crazy thinking. Even crazier because it works, but doesn’t work if I’m trying to be a smart ass and look to the direction I’m transferring to. At that point it’s time to rethink my moves before I ‘almost’ flop to the floor. Madness, that’s what it is, cowing madness. How the mind can sway the body and endure, adapt and give you faith to rise to the challenge.

Everything that is being done without the subconscious feel of the connection between mind and body influencing the action is amazing. Thoughts are not repressed they just need to find a different path to follow to get the message to the brains circuit board somehow. It’s kind of subliminal.

With so much to draw into my sponge brain it’s brain overload. Brain malfunction. Brain frustrated and brain tired. All at the same time.

I didn’t know what the fuk it was doing until my butt landed on the bench. I did it. I don’t know how but I made it. It left me with a smile on my face as big as the moon 😉

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Part 2.... Chapter 13....

5/2/2017

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Hello thoughts. It’s been over a week since I put pen to paper, because there has been a very mismatched, conflicting clash going on in my brain. ‘My’ sagacious thinking on how to move my body and how things should be done, are indifferent compared to ‘My’ brains coordinating intellectual switch board, of how my body should move and how things should be done are making everything unresponsive to each other.
It’s driving me mad in a funny and not so funny way. I am being told what to do and what to focus on but the mind ain’t having any of it.

The first day being transferred from the bed to the chair via the hoist, was a good day. The Physio wheeled me around the grounds of the Spinal Cord Unit, then through to the men’s ward to meet other patients. One guy was quite young around the same age as me. He was a fireman from Swansea if I remember correctly. God, my head injury makes me forget little things very quickly then reminds me hours, days or weeks later so when I remember where he’s from I’ll pop it in my next report.

Anyway, we chatted for a short time. He didn’t seem to want to speak of much, so I said we’d catch up again. I don’t think I’m his kinda para pal lol, oh well, you can’t please everyone.

A lot of the men here are in their older years and most are amputees. I don’t know why the others are here, looking around they seem bored out of their minds and are either limply sitting in their arm chair, or slumped looking half collapsed asleep in their wheelchair.

Apart from all my new visual surroundings, today was my first getting to know the feel of the chair day, and I must say it was ok. While left alone in it waiting for the hoist to arrive, I had the opportunity to try my first free spin around the woman’s ward. Rolling to and from bed to bed saying hello and testing how fast I could push the wheels without flying out of the chair. After all, they are my mode of transport now. It’s spin the wheels fast or slow to get to where I want to go, no workable legs to walk or run on now.

I was only supposed to be in the chair for half an hour on the first day, but it turned into an hour, as the hoist was in use somewhere else and I had to wait.

Every day I have been in my usual Groundhog Day;

Wake up to clanking tea trolley sounds. Say ‘Morning’ to all inmates. Eat breakfast. Get washed, dressed then hoisted in to the chair for an extra half an hour each day. Until I can sit in it for a full 8 hours.
Some days have been easy and others have been hard but every day has been a challenge that is making me stronger in my acceptance of being a paraplegic. It’s all new and certainly different. My sad tears have dried up now, only a river of happy tears fall with laughter. So far so good….
Except for the word, FRUSTRATION!!!!! …. It is trying it’s best to get the better of me. A trying time for the smallest of things.

Example:
Trying to reach something that is only one more centimetres stretch away, if that. It’s so close but so bloody far away. God, the frustration that that builds up inside can easily turn my feelings from excepting funny to creating anger.
Anger of being a paraplegic, not knowing how I became one. The frustration of having an inability that needs change. To re-learn the simplest of things brings the belittling anger I’m creating and giving myself. I want it to stop….

Fuk. FUUUUUK!!!!!!...... There it goes again. My thoughts. Me, Myself & I back in the void…. AAAARRRGHHHH!!!!!...... God, where are you? Again, I ask you to show yourself and open my mind to your guidance and again you do not. So, I go back to my Pagan Goddess.

Yes, I say to myself I have accepted my fate. I had no choice. I have no choice. There was, is and always will be no fuking choice. There is a lot to accept and I’m learning that day by day on different levels. That’s why and how I know deep down inside it’s a long journey of endurance.
Very meaningful and important words right now are driving me on and making me mad….
ACCEPTANCE, FRUSTRATION & ENDURANCE….

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