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

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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