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?

Yesterday a lad ( though no longer ) that was in Cardiff Uni with us, came to visit, with his wife Claire, and son Ben, and daughter Lottie ( both in their teens now )

The last but two times that we met up was at their house in Kent, about 8 years ago.
It’s about 50 miles from Chiswick, and given that I always had to exercise every day without fail, it seemed logical that I would cycle there and Dani would drive, and we’d put my bike on the back of my car to go home.

As I didn’t know where Sevenoaks was, and geography was never my strong point, I taped the primitive first generation Sat Nav ( battery powered ) to my handlebars and set off an hour before Dani and our two very little girls, reckoning I’d get there about the same time as they did.

These days with Sat Nav’s you can put in whether you’re in a car, on foot or pedalling a bike and it’ll route you appropriately. My Sat Nav didn’t have that function.

I was on the M25 for about 4 minutes before I realised my blind faith in the Sony Sat Nav was misplaced.
I weighed up whether cycling like f*** until I got to the next junction was preferable to turning around and pedalling the wrong way up the hard shoulder of the world’s busiest motorway on a Saturday.
As I pondered my choice I realised too late just how glass strewn the hard shoulder of a motorway is, and that in my slight panic I was not avoiding various bits of detritus.
A popping sound ensued and my front tyre went down rapidly.

I happened to hit very slow moving traffic at pretty much the same time, giving hundreds ( if not thousands ) of drivers the chance to watch a bloke mending his puncture on the embankment of the London Orbital – see, I’m not totally stupid, having the sense to not stay on the hard shoulder whilst I repaired my tyre.

Incredibly not a single driver hooted a horn or shouted well deserved abuse, nor did a police car come to take me away ( the motorway being ever so illegal to cycle on, with spy/traffic cameras no doubt trained on me continuously )

My inner tube replaced, I carried on my way, hitting crazy speeds of 35mph plus, the draft of 3/4 lanes of speeding traffic helping me along quite a lot. I can’t deny that that part was fun, and tried to make the best of the situation.

The next obstacle was where the M25 merged with some other motorway and I now had to cross lanes. That was a bit hairy.

I’m not sure how I ever lived to reach the age I did before breaking my back, as looking back I perhaps shouldn’t have. Maybe I simply used up all my lives?

I eventually got to Ed and Clair’s an hour later than planned, but having lost another life.
Or three.

After I’d been there for a few minutes Ed got a phone call -just a social call from a mate that was stuck in a traffic jam on the M25 to tell Ed that he’d just seen the most unbelievable thing ….

… A bloke cycling along the M25.

Thank you ( in no particular order ) to Carole Windsor-King, to Mike and Theresa Smith, to Cherie always, to Debs and Neal Watson, to Alison Evans, to Adam Jones, to Rick and Brett, to Caroline Bennfors, to Rob Colliver and Clair Mason, to the lovely Jayney C, to of course Dani, to Kim, to Tanya Mann, to Steve and Shelley Elson, to Jo and Andrew Fleet, all for being such positive people.

Thanks massively to Pia and Cliff for last night organising my girls to go ice skating and then for insisting that I go on the rink too?!
I’d have thought that Christmas Elf n Safety would have forbidden wheelchairs on ice rinks ( surely they can’t – that’s just common sense..? ) but actually there’s no ban at all…. and so I got propelled around by Cliff, by Pia, by Amber and by Holly in turn. And good fun it was too, and made me feel far less ‘excluded’ than I otherwise would have.
There’s even some video. It’s not exactly Torville and Dean, but it’s better than ‘owt for sure.

I’m seeing a counsellor at the moment.
According to Google… he’s most well known for having ‘saved’ Gazza ( footballer from the past – turned alcoholic )
Given the recent and widely reported state of Paul Gasgoine, I’m reconsidering my choice of professional.

When you’re childish like me, you can actually  amuse yourself very easily.

Example:

This is the first Christmas that we haven’t sent lots of cards. Dani and I in the past have been guilty of sending fairly inappropriate cards at this time of year – if you’ve ever had one, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

So this is my / our card this year… Which I blatantly stole from YouTube (via Mike Smith – my very good friend )

Merry Christmas to everyone that reads this diary

Love from,

Me

xx

We went to a University Christmas drinks reunion last night, meeting up with 20 or so friends from Cardiff days.
Amongst others. Adam and Sally Sharp were there, and it was their wedding anniversary, a wedding that Dani and I attended on the south coast. I’d have been 27 at the time

Adam sent me this text after I’d left last night. Although I can’t actually remember, I’m assured that it’s true, to my eternal shame obviously….

His text:
Russ, I meant to say it was 22 years to the day that you snogged and tongued my 90 year old gran at my wedding. She died 3 years later still m****
You legend. xxxx