It’s been provided by the company that originally made it, in Germany ( ODU ).

Im so bloody pleased, and so bloody grateful to so many people.

Huge thanks to Volker for making the big breakthrough!

Russ x

I had a good run…..

Visit me?

An unpleasant ‘first’ today, as I ‘projectile shat’ across the bathroom, unexpectedly. That’s the risk of having your bumhole on your tummy, it would seem…. Poor Linda is the lucky cleaner up’er. As I was only 2 feet from the wall, the area of spray was limited to mercifully small area ( 2 feet by 3 feet ) but a mess nonetheless. The blast was so strong  that none went anywhere near my knees, even. Maybe I should wear a poncho all of the time?

As well as again battling the main roads with Linda as my outrider to the hospital for a catheter change, we braved it back to Westfield to see The Post, all about journalism and the Vietnam cover up. Very educational film, with all star cast. It shocked me to see how little women were of influence back then, as recently as the 70’s. There are occasions when I think that might make life easier… but obviously I now realise that females are by and large far cleverer at most things. Ok, so not with plugs and spanners and stuff, but otherwise…

Also I’ve written to Twickenham stadium to point out how very useless their access information is, which for a sport that is so crippling to so many, is  appalling really..

New thing for today? Going to the ‘outdoor cinema ‘ to discover it was indoors.. but I saw Cool Runnings, which was the thing that made me reflective. A Jamaican bobsled team? Rank underdogs and no hopers that almost made it.

As unlikely as the paralysed guy finding himself happy?

I go on these internet dates, and in my head I’m thinking ‘ why on Earth would any girl ( that’s attractive ) possibly want to go out with me ( a paralysed guy in a wheelchair ) when there a zillion other guys who can walk around and do all the things that I can’t ?’
The fact that invariably I get the girl never actually changes the way that I think though – I ignore all the factual evidence, and doubt myself to the n’th degree, always. It doesn’t seem to translate to what comes out of my mouth, which is invariably ‘ confidence’ but inside I just refuse to back ‘ my chances ‘.

I’ve realised that the people I meet are also ‘ dealing with ‘ issues of their own. No one is ‘ without a bit/ lot of inner turmoil ‘ Your experiences mould you into the person you are, be they your childhood relationships with your parents/ family, your school experiences ( being bullied/ being the bully ), your sexual relationships, your marriage(s), your employment history/ status – it all contributes to F you up by percentage points. You can arrive at 45 and be to all intents and purposes pretty sane and ‘stable/normal ( whatever that is )’ or be a completely bipolar psychopathic schizophrenic. When I meet other people in the world of online dating, I now find that in spite of my being ( quite reasonably ) psychologically affected by being paralysed in an instant, disabled, divorced and much more besides, I’m by no means anywhere near the craziest person out there. When you’re 17 it’s all so much easier – and no one seems in the slightest bit deranged, but 30 years later it’s a whole different story!

One of my former internet dates I now ( semi ) jokingly refer to as The AntiChrist, though not obviously to its face.. though I appreciate that the origin of its problems were not necessarily of its own making…

I’ve no idea whether I’ll meet the perfect person for me, but statistically I’m beginning to think that’s unlikely, and also explains why people are quite desperate to cling onto patently unhappy marriages – at least they’re a known quantity, and perhaps better than the big gamble of single life.

Maybe the ‘mad woman living with 12 cats ‘ is the clever one after all..?

Thats why it was so bloody muddy and icy through Hammersmith, and the place was cordoned off – it had been under 4 feet of water an hour before – thank God I stayed out to have that extra drink – otherwise I might have drowned. Four feet is over my wheelchair head! What a way to go, after all I’ve been through- drowning in my own High Street. You have to laugh 😂

My new experience of the day?

Kissing a teacher…. not done that before – unless you count my Mum?? # différentkindofkissingaltogether….

1. …… my surgeon decided that he was happy with my fixation, that indeed it had broken, but that in doing so/ already  had stimulated new Bone generation in that area, which is ultimately stronger than the screw itself had been.

So… no revision or operation necessary to realign my willy, as Linda had put it that I’d put it… Perhaps I’m just cock eyed in the way I’m looking at it…..?

CT scan aside, I moved on quickly and met a fresh and ever so cute online date and we had a very entertaining ( what else with me ?) on floor 69 ( ahem ) of The Shard until chucking out time. There followed the slightly treacherous journey back to Chiswick through the burst drain streets of West London, arriving back to the worried Linda,  aka Bunny, at 2.30 am covered in ice and mud from the overflowing drains and cordoned off streets. Through police tape, water board lorries and JCB’s I wheeled, on my journey home, the wheelchair being allowed to go where mere mortals could not… such privileges do ever so slightly compensate?

I thank my new Carer for waiting up for me, true Mother Hen stylée, all protective over her new charge, in between penning literarary bloody masterpiece blog posts that put my childish written daubings to shame… I admit defeat on this occasion, but can she sustain it, or was it a one off, I wonder…? Has she blown her load all in one go, should we enquire….? Only time will tell.

4 am now and tomorrow is already half a write off then!

My First Week with Russ

The title of this post will hopefully be something of a tell to those of you who follow my erstwhile boss. NB not : “My First and Last Week” , “The Long Walk (back) to Freedom”(my Nelson Mandela roots) or even “It was Nice while it Lasted…” . I have survived my first week with Russ but find it salient to mention that he has survived his first week with me also – not something to be taken for granted as this blog can attest to!

I arrived from sunny South Africa exactly one week ago unsure what to expect which as it turns out was perfect because nothing could have prepared me for the world I was about land in and any expectations would merely have been illusions (or disillusions) in the face of the reality I have found here…..
Russ’s first day with me was difficult for us both. How many times, I wondered, has he had to hand over his care to a complete stranger, this time a particularly unqualified one. My fears were not rational. Any normal person might have been afraid of the array of wheelchairs and their chargers, spanners and equipment that awaited me or of riding a rigid front fork 20 year old mountain bike at 20mph through the London rush hour traffic chasing a madman in a wheelchair (and completely failing to keep up) but those things didn’t worry me. My concerns were more practical – or so I thought. How would I get the inaccessible bits of him clean, how do I remove a stoma bag from a hairy chested man and please God can I not drop him on his head when I’m moving him from wheelchair to bed or vice versa. Yet in those first few hours my worst fears arrived as my new employer declared that his belly button was no longer aligned with his Willy (his word not mine) and could I please check that for him as he ripped down his underpants so that I could have an unobstructed view of said misalignment ……As I said, the rush hour traffic was easy …

My week has been a kaleidoscope of new experiences, a sensory overload of interactive moments flinging themselves randomly across lovely London’s yet arriving in apparent order anyway and the complete privilege of looking at life with a brand new set of eyes. Who gets to do that?
I have found in Russell less of a disabled or handicapped, weakened or wounded invalid and more of a fiercely independent and completely capable individual, brimming over with energy and enthusiasm for life in its every possible incarnation and some that shouldn’t be possible at all. We have chased moments of magic from Chiswick to London Bridge, seen spectacular views at the new Battersea Power Station Development and visited the heights of Tower Bridge and the depths of Churchill’s War Rooms. This enigmatic man glows with a bright intelligence, longing to learn new and unexplored ideas and has a refreshingly innate ability to laugh at himself and the world. I learn something every day, even if it’s only that the wheelchair section of the movie theatre is a raised secluded private box or that the network of Russ’s dearest friends are a gossamer thread of the strongest kinship, real people who truly care about their crazy friend and will travel miles to visit for tea, repair a broken wheel or simply share the experience of a lecture at the RGS.
These are my first impressions. I know he is on his best behavior but hey after all so am I. Somewhere in this first week we have found an easy alliance. We are both fiercely self sufficient in the ways that really matter and yet somehow find it easy to lean on each other for the things we can each provide, unthreateningly, in an almost symbiotic manner as we navigate the early stages of what is, quite simply, life together.
We still haven’t worked out who exactly is the real boss in this relationship but I will be sticking around for a while longer and no doubt we will thrash that one back and forth verbally as well as physically ( while I try not to drop him on his head)

Tomorrow Russ has his long awaited MRI scan. As you know X ray’s last week (to diagnose the non-aligned Willy) revealed part of his spinal steel structure has come slightly adrift and further investigation is required. I think I will slip the nurse a fiver and ask her to check the loose screws in his head as well as in his back while she’s at it…..

Linda Warren