Tag: Cerebral Palsy

Things I would tell my younger self

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the advice that I would give my younger self if I could. By this I mean me about ten years ago at the age of 13. I’ve put in a lot of hard work in lots of different ways and I’ve achieved so many things since then. I surprise myself (in a good way) on a pretty regular basis. There are so many things the me of today would like to tell the me of the past. I thought I’d post some of them here:

1.       Always do your physio even though you don’t want to

I am the first to hold my hand in the air and admit that I did not do as much physio as I could, or should have done in the past, despite my parents and the physios always telling me how important it was and encouraging me as much as possible. The fact that I didn’t work hard enough was no one’s fault but my own. I wish I could tell myself not to have that attitude towards physio.

2.       You’ll start to enjoy physio, you know. Yes, really.

Thankfully, I did hit a turning point with this one after I had my surgery at sixteen. I found that I liked pushing myself to try and be able to do more and more and watching myself get better at all of the different exercises I was given. Also, I knew that I wanted to be back on my feet as soon as possible. I started working much, much harder at my physio.  I still enjoy watching myself improve, especially at the exercises I find really hard at first. I will admit though that I could still do more now too.

3.       Your hard work will pay off

I wish that I could go back and tell my younger self just how far my hard work has got me these days. Of course, I haven’t done this alone. I’ve had lots of support from lots of people along the way for which I’m grateful .I personally feel that I can do so much more now than I could back then. I don’t think 13-year-old Nic would believe me if I told her just how far we’ve all come together. Let’s hope it continues for a long time yet because I still feel like I can achieve even more as long as I keep trying. And, as long as I still feel that way, I know I will keep trying.

4.       It’s okay to feel proud of yourself

Often, when I achieved something, I would always try and brush it off and act like it was no big deal rather than letting myself accept that I’d done well. These days, I do allow myself to feel proud of things I achieve and use that as motivation to keep pushing forward.

5.       Everyone needs help sometimes

Because I think I needed to remind myself of that a whole lot more. This brings me on to…

6.       No one can do everything

Maybe this is actually the same point as the one above, but I think that I probably needed to phrase it both ways to myself.

7.       I know you don’t believe me now, but one day, you’ll see

Setting myself a challenge

Well, I’ve decided that it’s time to set myself a challenge. I want to try and see if I can master being able to do something that I’ve always found hard. It’s just a small one, and it won’t matter too much if I don’t manage it because it’s something that I can cope without being able to do.

The other day I was reading a post on Charlotte Maccalum’s blog called My 1st Ponytail. In it she talks about tying her hair back. Her post is the inspiration behind the challenge that I am setting myself. So thank you Charlotte for writing that post.

Putting my hair into a ponytail is something that I’ve always struggled with because it would involve me using both of my hands, and it’s something that I find really, really hard to do because of my left hand. I think I’ve managed to do my own ponytail once a couple of years ago and I’ve never managed it since. Surely if I’ve done it once, I can do it again. It wasn’t perfect, but it sort of stayed in until I got to the university lecture that I was going to, and then I think I asked someone else to do it again for me.

So, my challenge to myself is this: I want to be able tie my hair back again, at least once, and maybe even being able to do it whenever I want. If it’s something that I don’t ever fully get the hang of it won’t really matter because I can always just wear it down like I do now, but it would be nice.

I’m not expecting to be able to do it straight away, or for it to be neat and tidy if I do manage it, but I’d like to try.

I’ll keep you posted about how I get on.

Oh, snow!

Every winter, I dread the arrival of the stuff they call snow. Some years we don’t get any and sometimes we do.

I find it really hard to walk around outside when it hits. During these times I often don’t leave the house without someone with me for the fear that I will fall or get myself stuck somewhere.When I do go out, I take someone with me, and I use my wheelchair instead of my walking frame.

Earlier I noticed that things suddenly got very dark outside. At first I think it was raining really hard and then I noticed there was white stuff falling from the sky. At first I thought that it might have been hailstones because they were drumming quite hard against the window, it still might have been to start with, I’m not too sure. I wandered over to the window to take a look and noticed that the stuff falling from the sky seemed to look softer than before. I stood watching it come down for a few moments and the roofs of nearby houses started to get dusted in a fine white powder, as did the road and pavement.

It was snow.

Then, as quickly as it started, it stopped again. I think It’s all gone from the pavement and the road now, but there’s still a little bit on the houses.

I’m hoping that that will be the end of our snow for this year, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we got some more.

Well, I’ve been buying more socks

Believe it or not, I’ve actually managed to expand my huge sock collection that I’ve blogged about so often. I have ones of all different kinds for when my feet get cold, for sleeping in, and for when I’m wearing splints. Turns out I didn’t have as many of type number three as I thought, though…

Now that I’m starting to wear splints again, I found that I didn’t have any long socks that come up to, or over my knees. I didn’t realise this until I actually went looking for them in my sock drawer and my excess sock bag and found that I only had two pairs left! I was quite surprised by this because when I used to have splints before, a lot of the socks I owned were long because I wore my splints of often. I don’t really like the feeling of the splint against my bare skin, and I sometimes find that it gets on my nerves if I’ve been walking round in them all day. Having longer socks that came up my lower leg to around my knee made them more comfortable for me, and if the socks came over my knees I would just roll that part back down over the top of the splint, if that makes sense. I find that tights are good too.

 

Over time I guess the ones I used to have all got worn out and had to be thrown away, so I decided that I should probably buy some more.

Although now my sock collection is taking up a drawer, a bag, and has now started to progress into taking up room in a storage box too! Not that that will ever stop me buying any more. I like them all too much for that! And, I’ll still need all my shorter ones for days when I’m not wearing splints and my thicker ones for when it gets cold, right?

At least I should be able to wear these new ones as matching pairs for a while at least. That said, I did buy them in a couple of different styles and patterns so they will probably end up being worn as odd at some point…

Trying a rocker knife

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The rocker knife that was loaned to me

When I saw an Occupational Therapist, (OT), a while ago, I took the opportunity to ask her if she knew of anything that might help me become a bit more independent in the kitchen. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, then you’ll know that cooking is something I’m keen to get better at. I’ve even made it one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2014.

She said that the hospital could loan me some pieces of equipment that I could I try to see how they worked for me and figure out if they would be worth me buying. She loaned me a chopping board with spikes on a while ago, and said that she would try and get hold of something called a rocker knife so me to have a go with one of those too.

The one she loaned me is pictured above, and I suppose it is the kind that you would use to eat your dinner with on an evening and things like that, but she said that they come in other types as well, like bread knives, if I found them useful and wanted to buy some.

I’ve been looking forward to trying out the knife since she mentioned it, because cutting up food is something that I find quite hard at times. How hard depends on what food it is. Things like bananas don’t cause me too many problems, but things like certain types of meat, sandwiches with a few fillings in, and pizza do, to name but a few. I still struggle to use a piazza cutter.

Of course, the size of the plate makes a difference too because I find cutting things harder if they’re on a small one. I often say that people sitting close to me at the table may not want to sit too close in case they end up wearing my meal. How much I’m joking will depend on what the meal is.

I tried using this knife because the OT suggested that it might be easier for me. I’m not a professional so I can’t say if these would work, or be suitable for other people to use. I can only write this post as a reflection of how I felt using this kind of knife worked for me.

The rocker knife is curved so that you cut your food by moving it in rocking motion, rather than pushing and pulling your knife back and forth to cut food. For the purposes of this blog post I used it when I was eating a jacket potato because I was making the meal for myself and I find them really quick to make, and I only have to use the microwave to do it.

I know that jacket potatoes are usually quite soft on the inside. I sometimes have trouble cutting through the skin, especially if I’ve left it cooking for a bit too long. This happens more than I would care to admit.

At first, it was a little strange getting used to moving the cutlery a different way to what I am used to, but this passed pretty quickly. Although some of the skin still took a bit of getting through, I got the feeling it was probably easier than it would have been otherwise.

Because it is quite wide at the edge, I also found it helped when using the knife to push food onto my fork too, which I’d never really considered before I started using it.

I’ll also be experimenting with how easy I find it to use with other foods before I have to return it, although I don’t know what these will be yet. Then I’ll make a decision about if I want to buy one for myself or not.