It struck me yesterday why the paralympics are called the paralympics,...........is it from paraplegic Bet?
and i had a little lookee see as to what paraplegia means .......para comes from greek meaning beside, near, resembling and plegia comes from the greek plege ..to blow or strike ....
lysis comes from greek meaning to seperate, loosen, lose ..........paralysis is similar to losing......paraplegia is similar to being struck..
and anyone who has lost their nerve is paralysed with fear are they not .........literally some people do lose their nerve and it is bloody frightening
It has been a hot topic of conversation in Betty's world of late, the paralympics, paralysis, paraplegia........parachutes and parallelagrams did feature but not so much :-) lol
Partly because i have recently lost more of my nerve ..........
Partly because David Cameron has a fucking nerve ........
I was floating in a hydrotheraphy pool yesterday........, due to the wear n tear of walking , dancing, playing, performing, crying, running, living with hemiplegic cerebral palsy for the last 41 years.......... i have delevoped scoliosis (curvature of the spine) , osteoporosis, pelvic misalignment and i i have damaged my sacroiliac joints (where your back bones connected to your hip bones ) dem bones, dem bones, dem dry........sorry i digress :-> .
This has developed over many years , starting in my early 30's and earlier. As a consequence i have developed ongoing and consistant pain and have lost some of the mobility i once had, including walking ...
shit happens ay and everybody gets yips as they get older ay Betty ?........yes they do Betty but not between 20 and 40 ay.........still not alot you can do though.....bloody detest whinging , so ...I will do what i can to make myself as healthy and able as i can be...and i will live with the pain (please do not at this point think me stoical, brave or strong or looking for sympathy) i fucking dislike the idea and I will take diazepam and co codemol , oh yes, and I will ask for help when i need it :->! ...but i'll do it just the same..........It is not an insignificant point that the medical care i recieved as a child stopped completely by the time i was 12 and i was left to my own devices.
Most people with a congential or paediatric based disabilty will go out of the system when they reach either 16 or 18 , some do recieve adult care but not all. I didn't ....but it didnt really bother me until now.........see they didnt tell me what was going to happen?.....but my guess is they didnt really know themselves, the medical profession i mean....
It has now been found that people who live with cerebral palsy can develop lots of secondary ticks and yips , that are equally debilitating and add to the flavour ... including hip luxation ( dislocating), osteoarthritis, fatigue, increase in spasms, poor balance , early onset osteoporosis.(bone thinning) which leave bones brittle and prone to stress fracture.
Some of these things will not affect all people depending on the scope of the affected areas of the body... hip luxation is not recorded as common or heard of with hemiplegic people. Some things can affect all though..... whether you have spastic, athetoid , ataxic or mixed palsies, whether it is hemplegic, diplegic or quadraplegic, whether you have associated learning difficulties/disabilities or not...........
So i was floating in a hydrotherapy pool yesterday with my mum ( who has rheumatoid arthritis)
i was also floating with a rather feisty mother of two who broke her back two years ago and has diplegic paralysis.
Likewise i was floating with a mother of one who lives with ME and unspecified sciatic pain brought on during pregnancy.
And there we were all in different levels of mobility and pain , having a right old gossip as we stretched and moved.
What we discussed was in the main , our respective disabilities, the paralympics, DLA and David Cameron.
We all agreed that we had mixed feelings about the Paralympics :-) ..that it has been a marvellous spectacle was not in doubt, that many disabled people achieved their personal dreams was applauded, that the opening and closing ceremonies were fan was not in question.
We also all agreed we found the outpouring of pride from the great british public somewhat tainted by the "don't they do well" aspect of it.......it is kind of expected that a disabled person will obviously and undoubtedly wish to overcome their disabilities to be as like an able bodied person as is achievable.............
I cite Oscar Pistorius here, running against Usain Bolt, running in the Olympics. I do not think he shouldn't have and he runs bloody fast!!! he has pushed his body to it's limits and achieved quite an outstanding personal goal.........but personal is what it was........not an achievement for disability or other disabled people........he is an individual and there are others like him. There will be people who will be inspired by him. There are also people who are not like him , who will never achieve what he has done and could quite honestly be made to feel a failure because they cant be like him.
You see not all disabled people wish to be famous, or compete or be high achievers or stand up and fight!!! (metaphorically) for our rights!!! ..nor do we wish to be something we can clearly never achieve... no matter how snazzy the carbon fibre springs are..it is a fact that the paralympic classifications are there for a reason. C3, C4, C5, many of the athletes only stand a chance of beating anyone , if they are of a similar level of ability.......we do however wish us and our rights to be recognised and respected...as the lazy, unambitious, non sporting, easy life wanting, music loving, average achieving , bloody wonderful, intelligent, equal people that we are.
I am so glad for all the paralympians that they have been able to achieve their goals and should rightfully feel bloody chuffed with themselves!!!
We did share common feeling and common problems in the hydrotheraphy pool.... but had no wish to compare our relative disabilities ,difficulties or problems we encounter..we all agreed that our difficulties were our own and of equal merit and importance.....
The most outstanding thing we recognised was...:-> .............none of us was more disabled than the other....
we all agreed this is something many able bodied people and disabled people alike , seem to believe....why?
We all decided that we could , if we wished to , get fit, could train hard, practice and no doubt make a bid for the next olympics as we could have for this one......
The impetus being we would get funding for the physiotherapy, hydrotheraphy , personal care and mobility needs we all had if we did!!! ......we are all over 30,40 lol ..x..........but we also agreed we didn't actually want to. Did this make us lesser people , no! did it make us less worthy of support, No! but did we get it?......hmmm
Did we wish to prove ourselves or our disabilities to anyone, No!!
It was then in the hydrotherapy pool......we got onto DLA and David Cameron...........my mum is now retired but i and my new friends all worked, we all wished to keep a social life and we all still had quite a lot to say and do!! surrounding this was the common wish to stem, curb and stop the pain we were all in...............we all needed help of some kind had all made a claim for DLA and had all been refused!!!........and had all appealed :-> lol....
We all agreed that people with genuine disability far outweighed the number of benefit bludgers...we all agreed the refusal letter is a computer generated, cold, rude , incorrect and depressingly demoralising piece of literature, there will be many disabled people who will not appeal and will ultimately get no help whatsoever from the system we pay taxes to upkeep because of that letter, a letter unsigned and seemingly unread/written by human hand....a system approved by David Cameron.., they may continue to live lives of uneccessary hardship and indignity..... those who appeal don't automatically change things, either! but we do stand more of a chance........the are so many people living with disability that.........cope, manage, get by..........it really ain't good enough is it...
Another quite relevant point we all thought pertinant was... that if we had the means to overcome our respective difficulties and put changes in place to undo the problems that we had, then we would :-)
-) the DLA is being scrapped in April 2013 and the
Personal Independence Payment is being introduced, whatever that may be, we of the hydrotherapy pool collective weren't aware :-)
And David Cameron had the audacity to climb on the back of eight years hard work, on the back of paralympians and volunteers , that he has has very little understanding of or contact with, to make a condescending and ultimately fairly unhelpful undynamic, .............absolutely and truly hypocritical ...speech to make himself look good.