Last night my mood lifted a little perhaps and I slept for 7 hours or so.

When I woke I felt OK.

Two hours later I realised that I’d spent 90 minutes just sitting in my wheelchair in my bathroom doing nothing except ignoring the phone ringing.

I’d like to hear the voices of my children, but one is skiing and the other I don’t know what.

Today hasn’t start well and I have no interest in doing anything at all.

They’ve just left.

The door shut behind them. I’m in so much pain inside. All I wanted after my injury was to be with my girls, and I’ve let them walk out without me to fly thousands of miles away, my choice not to have gone with them. I hate myself so much in every way for doing this, for failing them again.

I wanted to scream out for them to stop, for them to take me with them, but I didn’t,  I let my beautiful family go so I can sink further into my despair.

The doorbell just rang and I wanted so desperately for it  to be them, coming back for me to take me with them. It wasn’t them of course, they are in the car and miles away by now.

How did it come to this.

I knew that Dani was bluffing, and she’d go on holiday. My God, she deserves a holiday from me and everything about  me. These last 3 years have been bad, even worse than the previous 5 plus years where I’m now told that I wasn’t nice either.  I hadn’t realised that

She and Amber leave in less than 2 hours, for fun in the sun.

Lily FaceTime called from her ski trip just now. She was so happy, so beautiful and so healthy. Amber is chasing her cat around our flat and laughing. She too is so happy and is so well  They could not feel more different about the world than I do.  The contrast is so painful – seeing  their joy and remembering how it felt to be that way – so long ago now – a dim memory never to be experienced again .

I know that Dani will look after them and that she can find them another Dad, a better one, who has  bits that all work properly.

I’ve been crying so much these last 2 or 3 days and can’t continue like this

My spasms continue as usual and I resent my legs  increasingly and want to stick sharp objects deep into them to give them something to really spasm about.

Which is what I will do.

It’ll be 2 years tomorrow that I left Stoke Mandeville hospital. I couldn’t wait to leave that place, having missed the outside world.

I don’t know what I expected, but it was ‘ better times’.

The reality has transpired not to be better times.

Being paralysed in the outside world is not better than being paralysed in hospital.

I’ve suffered a never ending sequence of bad luck, infections, injuries and events that have depressed me and tormented me. My non stop spasming continues as I write this.

There has been a change in my thinking. This has not become ‘a mental challenge ‘. It’s an awful physical challenge that my mind has refused to accept as being ok.

That’s because it’s not ok. It doesn’t get better by ‘ having a nice cup of tea ‘ , by ‘ having a nice holiday ‘ , ‘ having a nice hot bath ‘ or any of  the ‘ normal ‘ things that apply.  I’ve declined  to go out this evening to  someone’s house ( date arranged a long time ago ) because I just don’t want to go out.  I’ve declined to catch the already paid for flight to  Portugal on Monday too.  Like I said ‘ a few nice  days away  in the sun ‘ doesn’t make things better – not to me. Dani is angry that I ‘ can’t  just come on a family holiday ‘  Well it’s not a holiday for me.  I obviously want them to go anyway, but they may opt not to  – not my call.

Dani being angry helps me – I deserve the anger and have no defence.

‘It’ hasn’t gotten any better. I can safely assume I think that it won’t.  Why should it?

It’s not a question of what next anymore. It’s a question of when.

‘ Talking to someone’ may well work if you are physically fine but depressed about something or other. That’s a ‘normal world ‘ solution. I don’t live in the normal world though.  My injury can’t be fixed by talking. It’s not a ‘ chemical imbalance in my brain’ – my brain is perfectly rational. My mind is having to deal with my injury, and to accept that it’s ok.

Its not ok, and it’ll never be ok, not for me.

Dani and I are talking to someone tomorrow morning –  to me it’s for her, not for me.  Dani’s ‘ problems ‘ are all emotional and fixable, mine are  not.

People go on to do amazing things post wheelchair, right?   Actually, they’re amazing things done  given  they’re in a wheelchair – to able bodied people they’re usually commonplace achievements.

If I’m regarded as selfish next, then so be it – I was always selfish, you ask Dani.

If I’m cowardly, then so be it. Stick it on my head stone in big letters.

I was all too often an absent Dad, so I’ll just be reverting to type ( though on an extended basis )

I have tried to make a difference, in my return to work,  to various students and colleagues, though the nature of that work is that it’s expected  rather than appreciated,  so I get little in the way of positive recognition or gratitude.

It all adds up to one route.

Lily has gone away on a school trip, full of excitement and smiles, as always. I made her take a picture of her and I before she left, but  spent the hours around her departure close to tears or in tears. I remember the joy of her birth, back when all seemed perfect.

Amber seems not too concerned about not going away, but Dani says she may as well bloody go to work ( logical )

That’ll give me some time alone, so that’s good.

So it seems that treating my internal double infection has made no difference to the infernal spasming that I get.

Today, it has been going on all day. At the moment my right foot is kicking every single second

As it always gets worse at night,  I can hardly bloody wait for nightfall.  I now dread going to bed every night. I remember when bedtime was a  good thing.

To say that it drives me to bloody distraction would be an understatement. Nothing that I do makes any positive difference. Not understanding  how my f’d up body works is highly dissatisfying. Pre injury I was totally tuned in to it. Yes it would break down now and again and I’d know the work around, which helped me a lot. The contrast  now couldn’t be greater -as often as not I have no idea at all why things happen, and therefore can’t fix it.

Tonight im going to try having a lot to drink.

Could be one leg or both

As I lay spasming and sweating and pissing myself in my bed last night, I had it all planned.

The note, the last blog post, the knife into my femoral artery ( obvious place as I can’t feel my legs ) and a fairly swift bleed out, by myself, alone,  as I’ve mostly been for 2 days.

My cycle of hot and cold has been joined by coughing up blood and retching regularly.

When a person is actually happier in a hospital ward, that’s quite telling. It’s apparent to me that I’m better off in there, with all the other sick people.

I was sad to come home to realise that my children have so very little time for me, stuck in bed and feeling desperately low. Two or three minutes at best, or until one wanted her phone fixed, when suddenly more time was available.

I’m tired of the excuse that it’s what teenagers are like, to be honest. I struggle to think of anything charitable that either of them have ever done, and on current form neither will ever do anything. If they’re too busy to spend a little time with their disabled dad, who has just come out of hospital, and is desperate to see them, then what hope is there?

On the subject of giving, thank you to Sima, my lovely colleague and former student, in Sel’s practice, who took on the fund raising for Selcuk’s coffin transportation, and did so well. She put the word out and raised quite a lot. It’s struck me over the years how those with far less so often give, relatively, so much more generously, and sometimes how those who absolutely should contribute, don’t.

Before my accident I did all sorts of athletic endeavours for charity, but don’t recall my remaining  business ‘partner’  ever donating anything. I thought that on this occasion she might, just might have though, professing recently to ‘ have been like a sister to Selcuk ‘. I’ve not talked on this blog about this woman, but on this occasion feel I should.

My feverish state led to a vivid dream about me kayaking from a disused industrial estate as well as ‘finding’ all this  stuff that had been ‘ left’ there –  it definitely wasn’t mine to help myself to, but in my upbringing in South Wales, if it wasn’t tied up then it  might not be there when you came back 5 minutes later. ..

When I was in Kentucky last year, I wheeled past, and then observed for quite a long time, a fully loaded toolbox, along with ipad, that a tradesman had just wandered off from and left on a pavement

If you think the USA is the crime capital of the planet, then think again.

I got there.

I was able to make a speech, to suggest a pub for all to go to afterwards and talk to old colleagues, and put my cars behind the bar.

No alcohol for me.

Terribke spasms, bad sleep, and all day in bed at home. Headache and very hot again.

So glad I made it. Was very moving.

Feel like crap

They are promising to let me out, in time to get a taxi to Selcuk’s service, where I’ll meet Dani.

I had lost hope of going, and Dani was going to speak on my behalf, but now I get to do my own talking.

They will discharge me with quite a lot of drugs for the next 2 weeks, which should sort out my double infection that I have going on concurrently.

Me and my ward buddy opposite will stay in touch I’m sure and maybe collaborate on some future Zorb Ball enterprise.

Watch this space.

The vacated lorry driver’s bed has been filled.

The gentleman appeared, amongst other things, to have some difficulty walking.

He was here a few hours before he asked the nurse to help him visit the toilet. As he is directly opposite me, I  pretty much have to turn my head or close my eyes not to see him.

He is wearing a standard hospital gown. They cover the front of you and are tied at the back, but  also open at the back too.

I was treated to the view of him bending over, with his back to me, and his feet planted firmly apart, with no underwear on.

I could see the reason for his odd gait.

He’s got bigger nuts than I have!

And that’s why he’s here…

So now I’m not only paralysed and bed bound, but also not even the bloke with the biggest bollocks on the ward!