I went to Stoke Mandeville yesterday  ( thank you Dani for your help ) and was there for quite a long time. I can tell that my consultant there ( who as an inmate you see ever so briefly once a week or fortnight ) seems to have a curiosity ( can’t think of another word for it ) about me. I left there 2 years ago and really hardly saw him when I was there, yet he remembers all kinds of details about me that really he should have forgotten – maybe he reads this blog?! But I doubt it.

Anyway, they did standard X Ray’s and an ultrasound of my bladder, discussed my distressing spasms at length, talked about my bladder a lot too, and then it got more interesting  when I prompted a discussion on a possible straightening of my spine ( which in the haste to save my life in Toulon they cobbled together very badly ).  So they can now revisit it and re-operate to stack the vertabrae on top of one another in a straight’ish line. That ought make me more upright and less twisted than I am now – I hope.

There is a slight risk that I end up more paralysed than I am now but I’m cool with taking a chance.

Also they found the very large swelling to my sacral ( tailbone/ coccyx ) area quite alarming and want to do an MRI scan urgently to rule out a tumour. That eventuality didn’t even cause me a flicker of concern either.

On the assumption that I don’t die soon of the above I’ve decided to make a dramatic change in the direction of my life, having realised one or two things.

Some things are unrealistic and not achieveable, no matter how hard I wish for them.

Some things are definitely achieveable, but having tried very hard to make them happen for what seems like an eternity, I now realise are beyond my control and in the hands of others. Those things I can let go of and say goodbye to.

I spend way, way too much time being very unhappy / suicidal even, but there is an alternative approach – not one I had imagined taking a year ago (or even a month ago )  – but it would I think set me free, and give me a another bite of the cherry.

First things first though – medical investigations to my insides/ tumour search / major spine surgery / time in hospital recovering.

Oh and I need a haircut as well.

Thanks to Steve and Shelley ( mostly Steve ) for his words, and thanks always to Clair,  and to Pia.