Results tagged “dreams” from Looking Up

If you compare Rex with this previous development in Israel:



And just so you know that this will definitely happen, here's proof of interest from the most influential section of society when it comes to technological innovation. Yes, the Military are getting involved, too.

Analogy time:

In my mind I can see a huge, bad tempered bear.
 (my pain)
I shoot the bear with a tranquiliser dart.
 (I go to bed)
This makes the bear angry.   
 (Getting out of my wheelchair and lying down makes my pain worse)
The bear flails around, tearing at the dart with an angry paw.
 (I flail around, massaging my lower back with an angry paw)
Eventually the bear passes out.
 (Eventually, I fall asleep)
The bear wakes up with a sore head, and eats a jar of honey.
 (I wake up with a sore back and eat toast and marmalade)

So here is where my pain and I diverge. Clearly, I'm more Paddington than Pooh.

Our flat is wheelchair accessible, or at least I think it is. To be more accurate our flat is me-in-a-wheelchair accessible which, I am coming to realise, is not necessarily the same thing.

It's not that I have had many other visitors come to test it. Which is strange in a way. Yes, some of my best friends are wheelchair users, but my encounters with them are all elsewhere. This is not a deliberate policy, but I had to think about how many other people in wheelchairs had visited our flat. I think perhaps two. That's two visits in five years.

What got me thinking about this was an increasing sense of pride in my ability to overcome obstacles or unsuitable facilities. If we stay in a hotel, all I request (apart from no stairs) is that the doors are sufficiently wide (and my chair is a slim 64cms. Narrow enough to pass easily through a standard width doorway), and a bath, rather than a shower cubicle.

Yes, I start by requesting a fully accessible room with a shower seat in the bathroom, but the reality is that these are few and far between. And such rooms often feel institutional, with twin single beds and lino floors.

If I stay with friends, then I strap on (oo-err) my 'all-rounder' and take to the stairs, bum-first. Yes, it's hard work, but it does mean a more 'normal' life. I can stay, I can use the bathroom, I don't have to sleep on the couch/in the dog basket/in the shed.

But I'm also conscious that I'm at the more active end of the paraplegic spectrum (and that one day I won't be). And as I get on with life at home I am starting to notice the things that are just a bit of hassle for me but would be impossible for many wheelchair users.

One day...one day...
 A house with wide hallways that I can turn around in, more shelf space at a lower height, an easily accessible garden (ours has a flight of eight steps down from a balcony), and most holy of holies, a garage for me to put all my wheelchairs, bikes, trikes, spare cushions, wheels and tyres in. Oh, and a studio. 

Maybe I'll even get a wheelchair and a computer all to myself...

It is of little consolation to read that other wheelchair users find themselves pretty much housebound by the snow. Andrew Farrow, for example, talks of getting stuck between the house and the car, when he found himself wheel-spinning in the snow. I managed a few good wheel-spins on my semi-slick tyres yesterday.

Then I rolled through what appeared to be snow, but was actually a load of crushed mothballs (?). No really. As a result, my wheels, my gloves and even the cuffs on my jacket smell like the long-abandoned depths of a grandmother's cupboard. I keep glancing nervously over my shoulder, half-expecting to be savaged by a mink stole. I hope the smell doesn't have the same fur-coat associations for foxes, as one has taken up residence in our garden...

On the whole, I have remained relatively mobile, thanks largely to Penny clearing the path and the good people of Hackney Council coming and regularly shoveling snow off the pavement. That being said, I have still avoided venturing out except for the odd foray to the supermarket.

This feeling of house-boundedness has served to remind me just how much of my connection with the outside world was severed along with my spinal cord.

Before my accident (fell out of a tree while working as a tree surgeon for anyone new to this site), I worked outdoors every day. If a day went by without me going outside, a used to feel really odd. A sort of crawling the walls, claustrophobic odd.

Most of my leisure activities involved being outdoors- football, mountain biking, hiking, camping, Ultimate, or just hanging out in the park or on Hackney Marshes with friends.

Now, it is possible for me to go three days without leaving the house. This is extreme, of course. We don't usually have this much snow. If we did, I would probably work out a few strategies to make life a little easier. I still have quite big tyres on the wheelchair wheels that I 'wore' to Australia, and that certainly helps.

But with a platform lift between me and the street, and a balcony and flight of stairs between me and the back garden, I have lost the ability to just 'step outside'.

So I find my wishlist growing ever longer. As well as dreaming of an open plan home with level access throughout, I would like to be able to roll out into a garden, cup of coffee in hand, and stare at a few trees. Please.

Mind you, staring out of the window into the back garden revealed that I am not the only one who appears house-bound at the moment...

A funny night. After playing tennis for the first time in two weeks I spent a disturbed night, first with a headache but then woken up by my old mate Spike. It's been a while since last he visited, and I lay there knowing that it was time to reach for vitamin Z.

But then something unexpected happened. I fell asleep again. This is the first time that I have ever managed to do this without some chemical intervention. I put it down to complete exhaustion, but it's definitely something to draw a little optimism from. That said, my subsequent dream had me trying to drain my bladder with a snooker cue while sitting on a trapeze. Extremely disturbing.

 If I were to draw a graph of my battles with Spike, it would show a steady decline in frequency of visits, so something's talking him out of dropping by.

On the same subject, there is yet more research published this week that relates to my every day. This time it is on the subject of pain and pain management.

With this and previous medical  revelations, I just need to come up with a good recipe for coral and blue M&M soup. Mmmmmm, yummy.

Last night, while driving back from tennis at about eleven p.m., I had my first flat tyre since I have been a wheelchair user. I pulled into a service station, wondering if I should phone the RAC, but decided that I should see what I can do myself, as I didn't fancy sitting in the car for two hours waiting to be rescued.

The first challenge was finding the wheelbrace (under the bonnet).Then I had to find the manual, which revealed that the jack is actually housed in the spare wheel under the car. As I wrestled with the huge heap of assorted wheelchair wheels in the boot of the car to get to the release for the spare wheel, I became aware that I was being watched carefully by the attendant in the night-counter.

He probably had one shaky finger poised nervously over the panic button, convinced that I was part of some elabourate ruse to drae him out of the office. After all, no wheelchair user in his right mind would attempt to change a wheel on a car, would they?

While I understood his reluctance to get involved, I was a little disappointed when someone came in, filled their car, paid, and left without paying me the slightest heed.

That said, I was glad of the opportunity to see just how much I could do, and discovered that I could actually change the wheel all by myself.

The next person to come into the station did get out of his van and offered to help. And he did it really nicely, too. He said he was running early for work and that he'd be happy to finish off the job if I wanted. I let him nip the wheelnuts up, and we had  a 'car talk' in the way men do, chatting about emergency sparewheels and the location of jacks.

Although the whole thing was a hassle and I ended up getting home after midnight, I am still basking in the satisfaction of knowing that I can still change a spare wheel. OK, so the average light-bulb is still just a dream, but you've got to start somewhere...

(By the way, I know the picture is clearly not King's Cross at 11pm, but I thought it was a bit more picturesque)

As I may have mentioned in the past, one of the medications that I take to combat my neuropathic pain is Amitriptyline. This is a medication that was originally developed as a tricyclic antidepressant, but has been found to be effective in reducing the symptoms of nerve pain. I have been taking the stuff since I was in hospital, but I cannot honestly tell you if it's doing anything. So I have decided to creep up to the maximum dose, and if I find no improvement, I shall come off it altogether.

So, that's why I'm taking 100mgs of the stuff every night. Only thing is, last night I forgot on account of being feverish. I realised my mistake this morning and thought the best thing would be to take them straight away.

Well, that mental picture you have just painted is probably spot on. I went from fine to very not fine, to queasy, and then passed out. It was all very scary for P, who thought at one stage that I had stopped breathing. Luckily a loud snore provided reassurance that I was still here.

Still, it was all pretty frightening stuff for a while there. It has made me change my ambivalence about all the pill popping. And has made me more determined to identify things that aren't helping and kick them into touch. Metaphorically speaking, obviously...

I was kidding myself. Delusional. I honestly thought that me, collector of ailments and virtuoso of the gentle, pitiful moan, that this time I would not succumb, despite R and P both going down with it.

And it's real, 100% guaranteed influenza. I know this not because I have been snogging geese, but rather that my temperature today has been up around the 40c mark.

Sadly, the extra bonus symptom that I have to contend with when I have a fever is a sensation akin to having knitting needles driven into my thighs every few minutes. Coincidentally, P has taken up knitting, which makes me a little suspicious. But that is mainly the combination of the fever, the heady mix of various pharmaceuticals and a lack of sleep last night. I actually started hallucinating this afternoon.Sadly it was all rather mundane, peripheral vision a bit wobbly as I sat Buddha-like, cross legged and wearing virtually nothing. At one point I imagined myself to be sitting atop a mountain. But then the phone rang, and there was an audible 'pop!' as my revery was replaced by someone asking if my name was Nisnad, or Nangtod or something.I became very confused. Maybe that too was an hallucination, but of an auditory kind.

Luckily I didn't receive any guests, as I'm sure I must have looked shocking.

That was until R came back from nursery and blew raspberries on my tummy. Surely that's the way to reach enlightenment. I began to imagine monasteries full of Buddhist monks blowing raspberries on each other's tummies. There could even be a surprise hit CD in it, too. Well, if the Gregorian/Benedictine mob can do it... Although I'm sure producing a very strong liqueur must have helped them break down Monastic inhibitions.

Sorry for all this drivel. I'm going to stop now and chase a sleeping tablet into bed.
I leave you with R's insghtful portrait of me. Kind of sums it all up, really.

Happened again last night, thankfully. No, dear reader. I'm not suggesting that my paraplegia is 'cured' by my being unconscious. Now that would be confusing, wouldn't it? Imagine having to fall asleep at the bottom of the stairs in order to wake up at the top. At least long-haul flights would be more bearable.

No, the walking I am referring to occurs in my dreams. The funny thing is that on some subconscious level I am still aware that I am disabled, and so in dreams I affect a slight limp. Last night's slumbers were interrupted by frequent bursts of pain that woke me up. This is not that uncommon, but last night it was more persistent. And for some reason, my limp became more pronounced, and actually slowed me up.

All this leaves me extremely unsettled by the possibility that I may eventually be paraplegic in my dreams.

Other news...

I shall be reading from my book and discussing the writing of it on Monday 13th October at 8pm in Stoke Newington Books, should you find yourself in the neighbourhood (London's 'bohemian' N16 area for anyone who is overseas). Entry is £2.50 in which includes a glass of wine, apparently. Bargain.