Last night I slept for 8 hours – as in I fell asleep quickly and didn’t wake until the morning. It was the first time in weeks.

How?

I went out with Dani and drank a reasonable amount.before I went to bed, and took a sleeping pill.

This doesn’t strike me as a long term strategy, but was good for one night.

Sleep is yet another thing that I seem to have lost.

Night after interminable night I lie awake, my bloody useless legs vibrating all by themselves, jarring the rest of me sufficiently to keep me from drifting off.

Sleep is a powerful thing – all animals need it to function properly, including me.

As only 40% of me works, it doesn’t follow that I only need 40% of normal sleep. I take tablets out of desperation, but they are addictive and I don’t really want to add that to the list of stuff wrong with me.

It’s late though and I can’t bear another night like this so I’ll take another one

Today, after a shockingly bad night in bed, followed eventually by sleep, I’ve spent 2 hours talking to my lawyer, followed by THREE HOURS on the loo.

The process is pretty awful, and the skin of what’s left of my once fine ass is broken, leaving a fair bit of blood on the loo seat.

It’s 4pm and that’s all I’ve been able to do today.

Life isn’t a bed of roses.

So it turns out that I have an infected wound on my right foot. Although I can’t feel it  at all ( obviously )

Yet another danger of my condition – and how Christopher Reeves died, ultimately – an infected pressure sore, they said.

When I  think of that eventuality, I am  almost without emotion ( rightly or wrongly )  In fact, knowing what I know now about living with this injury, and knowing the huge medical team that was available to Mr Reeves, I find it hard to believe that his death wasn’t deliberate – that he chose not to be treated. There’s an assumption that any kind of life has to be better than being dead, but that’s not true, and until you’ve experienced that situation you really don’t know anything about it .

I have however started on a course of antibiotics, which should save me, and taken a strong sleeping tablet to knock myself out.

My spasms are now overall worse than they’ve ever been. Worse still, they wait until I’m in bed to really unleash.
My knees actually lift right up  very often. I’m sure  an observer would have no idea that I was actually paralysed, if I was filmed at night, my body being so restless. The give away would be that I can’t/ don’t turn over, or at least not without being awake and doing it quite methodically. It takes a couple of minutes, and then more time trying to work out whether the duvet is covering my my body below my shoulders, as I can really feel much below my shoulder blades.
I’ve taken to doing lots of pull up’s from a girder in the place that I live. I used to do a lot pre injury, and they’re a great exercise, for upper body and core.
Now that I have very little core control ( which does depress me – most of my exercise used to be core strengthening related ) the pull up’s work my arms, shoulders, lats and my back, depending on how I do them. The downside is that as my broken body hangs from the girder, paralysed bits of me get stretched, and they’re not used to it. Although I can’t feel the stretch at all, the muscles themselves can, and get sore, which then leads to spasming.
The answer ( I think ) is to keep doing it, and not to stop, expecting that the muscles will get used to it eventually.

We’ll see.
I went to my youngest’ s school pantomime recently.
After a while, I was moved to say to Dani that even the boys looked like girls in this school.

Without any hint of good humour, I was reminded that Amber does in fact go to an all girls school. …

Are Dads supposed to remember this sort of detail?