Author: Nicola Golding

My name is Nic, I'm 26 and just happen to have Cerebral Palsy that I've had since birth. It mostly impacts on my legs and my left arm and so I use a walking frame. When I'm not blogging I can usually be found making YouTube videos, reading or trying to write a novel.

Learning to love physio

I’m not going to lie, learning to love physio was hard. I don’t mean trying to do the Sudoku puzzle in the morning paper hard, I mean trying to give up the food you love the most hard.

Over the years I’ve had loads of physiotherapists and I have liked them all. I just didn’t find the therapy itself particularly enjoyable from the age of around six or seven until I was became old enough to understand and appreciate the benefits . The reasons that I didn’t like it were, admittedly, my own fault, no one else’s.

I was stubborn and pretty much all my friends were able-bodied when I was growing up and, as far as I knew, none of them had to have physio. But I did. It made me feel different and I hated feeling that way. I’d dodge doing my exercises as much as possible and would row with my parents about it all the time. I’d shout, scream and cry about it but they’d still make me keep doing the stretches that I needed them to help with, but I’d always try and avoid doing the ones that were my own responsibility. Sometimes, I’d go weeks without doing any and other times I’d do a set every couple of days. In reality I knew that I should be doing them morning and night at least but that never really happened.

I used to dread the appointments with my therapists because I knew that I wasn’t doing as well as I should or could be. They never actually told me off or shouted at me for it, but deep down I always felt like I was letting them down. Really I suppose the irony is was that the whole time the person I failed and disappointed the most was myself.

Then at sixteen I had a complete attitude change. I had some surgery (much more on that later) which meant that I wasn’t allowed to stand for six weeks, after which there’d be another operation. If I didn’t buckle down and get on with it I knew that I wouldn’t get the most out of the opportunity that I was given and I didn’t want to waste it.

Mum, Dad and I embarked on a regime that seemed to feel like I was doing exercises every 30 minutes. It was probably more like every 90 looking back on it. At the time it hurt more and left me more tired than any I’ve ever had to do in my life. I used to mock complain about the amount I had to do, but secretly I found that I actually looked forward to it!

I found my inner competitive streak around that time, even if it was only with myself. I would try and do one more of each activity every time and when I could see the results it made me so proud that I didn’t want to stop. I knew that I was being proactive in helping myself and that made me feel good and is probably what got me through that rehab period, along with the love and support of those around me, of course.

After that I figured that I worked so hard there was no point in giving it all up now. While I admit that I probably didn’t do as much of it as recommended while I was studying, I’ve really tried to get into a habit now that I’m back home again. Yes, there are times when I slip, days I forget and some days that I make the choice to have a day off. Now though, I don’t dread the appointments, I look forward to them and the sense of achievement that they bring.

Wakey wakey, achy achy

Yet again today I’m feeling grateful for the small things that make the biggest difference to my life. Yes, things like my walking frame Martha and my walk-in shower have a huge, huge impact and I couldn’t imagine not having them in my life anymore, but sometimes I think the over shadow the small things that really, really help. Today for example, I am thanking my lucky stars that my family have quite a large collection of wheat bag

I know that wheat bags might not be suitable for everyone to use, and I am not a medical professional so I cannot suggest when anyone else may want to use one, or should not use them. This post is a reflection of my personal experience with wheat bags and should not be used as a replacement for medical advice.

I’ve heard people refer to them as many different things from heat cushions to heat pillows and hotties, but they all pretty much do the same thing. You pop them in the microwave for a few minutes to warm them up (like my microwave socks) and then I can put them wherever I’m feeling stiff or sore to try and sooth the problem. Some of them even come scented like lavender or vanilla, but in the end I always think that after you’ve had them a while they start to smell like popcorn. No one else agrees with me on this point but I like the aroma and I love popcorn so I don’t really mind because it makes me happy nonetheless.

On the surface I know it sounds almost no different from using a hot water bottle, but the thing is that I can’t fill one of those up for myself (not safely anyway) so when my mum introduced me to these a few years ago it was like a revelation – I could use these whenever I wanted rather than having to wait until there was someone else around! When I went to university I forgot to pack one in my suitcase and didn’t make it all the way through the year without one. I think I did manage to hold off getting one until second term though, which I was quite impressed at. Now I’ve learned my lesson and it is the first thing I pack if I know I’ll be away from home for anything longer than about four days.

This morning when I woke up with both of my hips and my neck feeling quite stiff I didn’t really think twice about hunting one down and using it. I’m not saying that they are the best thing for everyone – we’re all different so I know that they won’t be suitable for all, but they really help me personally to feel better. Another reason I like these quite so much is that I can wrap them around my body too which I find to be an advantage if I’ve had a long day pulling Martha around and my arm and shoulder muscles start crying out for some TLC.

They come in all shapes, sizes and colours and my mum gets me a new one every Christmas or birthday. Last year she got me a Smurfette one (which I was VERY excited about – way too excited, if I’m honest) and the year before that I got a squirrel teddy that had one inside, but I love this one far too much to bring myself to take it out of the packaging.

The Super Sweet Blog Award

Hey guys! I have news…

super-sweet-blogging-award

My little blog has been nominated for The Super Sweet Blog award by the equally sweet Yvette  (AKA Strawberryquicksand). She leaves the loveliest comments and always makes me smile. As you know, I’m fairly new to the blogging game so I feel really humbled that she thought of me. Thank you!

So now I have to follow a list of rules that go with this nomination which you can see below. Point one is that I have to say cheers to Yvette for the nomination (check) I have to answer a few questions about myself and nominate other people. Let’s do this thing!

 

RULES

Thank the Super Sweet BLOGGER that nominated you.

Answer 5 Super Sweet questions.

Include the Super Sweet Blogging Award in your blog post.

Nominate your nominees on their blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE 5 SWEET QUESTIONS

(Please all nominees answer the same questions)

  1. Cookies or Cake? – Cake, especially if it’s carrot cake. Cookies are good and all, but it’s just not in the same league as carrot cake..      Chocolate or Vanilla? – Chocolate. I adore the stuff. In fact, I’m pretty sure I eat so much of the stuff that it runs through my veins.
  2.      Favourite Sweet Treat? – Hmmm this is a toughie, but I think it has to be cheesecake.
  3. When do you crave sweet things most? – After dinner, usually while I’m drinking a cup of tea.
  4. Sweet Nickname – I have so many nicknames, I’m not sure any of them are sweet, though!

Sooo, my nominees are:

The Storm Brewing – I’ve nominated Sarah Jane for thus award because all her food looks amazing and always makes me hungry!

The Jackie Blog – because there’s just something about Jackie’s blog that cheers me up just by looking at it. I don’t even have to read any of it before I start feeling better. That, and I think that Lollipop Tuesday is a great idea.

My (dis)abled life. -I always really enjoy the heart-warming and honest nature of Ali’s posts.

I’d also like to nominate my friend and fellow blogger Lucy Milne who blogs over at Blogger, without whom I would have probably never started this blog

So there you have it Happy reading everyone 🙂

The difficulties of eating out

Eating out is hard sometimes. Not because I’m embarrassed to eat in front of others or because I can never choose where to go, but because of my Cerebral Palsy.

As well as my legs, I also have problems moving my left arm and hand. Often, I  will know what I action I want it to do, but then it will go ahead and decide to do something different, or make the task in hand (no pun intended) much, much harder than it needs to be.

Because of this, I find it quite hard to cut my own food. I can manage soft things, like cooked potatoes and vegetables are ok, but things like pizza, chicken and steak are an entirely different story. Although I’m right-handed I have to swap and change how I hold my cutlery throughout my meal depending on whether I’m trying to cut my food or pierce it so that I can actually get it on my fork to eat.

If I’m in a pub or fast food place with my family or my boyfriend and I start to struggle I’ll ask them to help me out, but it’s not something I like to do if I’m in some swanky restaurant (which is hardly ever, to be fair). I know that I shouldn’t feel self conscious about needing help with, but sometimes I am, as much as I hate to admit it. I always try and pick something from the menu that I think I’ll be able to manage easily to avoid situations like this.

Then there is the issue of toilets. Places that serve meals are sometimes quite tight and always full of people carrying plates with things on and hot liquids so I feel under more pressure than ever to not fall over. If I can fit Martha or my wheelchair through the gaps between the tables it’s not too much of a problem. If I’m in a group, it’s okay too because I always ask someone to walk to the bathroom with me to help me doge anything that I could break or trip over. If there is just me and one other person, I often have to catch the attention of a member of staff to ask for their assistance and then leave a decent tip afterwards because I know that it can’t have been a very pleasant thing for them to do and I’m always worried that I’ve taken them away from whatever they were supposed to have been doing at the time.

For these reasons and others, when eating out I try and stick to local pubs when I’m going out for a meal. Don’t get me wrong I think that going somewhere that could be considered fancy is a nice treat sometimes, but I often spend far more time worrying about trying to eat, get around and dropping or spilling things than I probably should.

Hopefully I’ll get over this eventually.

How my eReader has helped me

My eReader
My eReader

For as long as I can remember I have been a bookworm.  As a kid my dad would spoil me on our weekly family shopping trip to town by buying me a new Mr. Men book from the market as long as I promised to read it. Needless to say, I devoured the whole thing within an hour of getting home without fail. Most of the time I’d make him read it to me the first time, just in case there were any words I didn’t know even though I knew that I was perfectly capable of reading it to myself. Every time he’s grumble about it but he’d eventually he’d give in, curl his legs round on the sofa so that there was a space the shape of a boat and tell me to get in it while he read the story. After Managing to collect all of the Mr Men Collection and half of the Little Miss Series (both written by Roger Hargreaves) I decided that I was too old for these and my parents and I started hunting down the Garden Gang books at car boot sales instead.

This love of devouring the written word has followed me throughout my life. My parents gave me £5 the day that I managed to read them a story from the newspaper aloud to them in keeping with family tradition. In many ways I think that scouring the weekend tabloids for stories  I understood (usually about soaps or famous people) could have been what sparked my interest in the news and journalism in the first place but I digress.

As a teenager I would take a huge stack of books with me on every family holiday until my bag was at the point of bursting at the seams and my school backpack was always far heavier than it needed to be under the weight of the ones that I borrowed from the library.

Eventually my mum suggested buying an eReader as my 21st birthday present to make it easier for me to carry my bags wherever I went. I first I was really against the idea, thought that it wouldn’t be like reading a proper book (which it still isn’t, in my view) but it has helped me an awful lot.

Due to my Cerebral Palsy there is hardly ever a day that goes by without something hurting or aching in some way. I find moving around had enough without trying to haul a heavy bag around with me. Now, when I’m going on a long journey, I’ll pop that in with the rest of my stuff instead of my paperback. It’s great because not only do I have to worry about running out of reading material, but I get a lot less back and shoulder pain that I would do if I was carrying books. This means I can walk further and easier than I could before. It made a huge difference too when I had to move away from home again for a few months for work, I took that with me instead so that I meant I had less packing and unpacking to worry about. I find this very difficult to do alone and it tires me out very quickly.

While it will never replace a physical book in my heart I am glad that I took my mum up on her offer to buy me one. She said she thought it might make life easier for me in the long run. What can I say? She was right again.

As always.