First things first and a big welcome, this website is something I’ve taken time to cobble together to try and get my story of living with a T12 Spinal Cord Injury out there for posterity.
It has taken me almost five years since I was first diagnosed with Spinal Cord Damage to sit down here today in front of my computer. To sit down and write about my ongoing fight against my injured Spinal Cord.
More than anything else, I’m conscious about making sure that this site stays away from being nothing more than a long list of complaints about my lot and how terribly unfortunate I’ve been.
I am fortunate, in having thick skin and don’t really ever waste time worrying about what people think about me. That even goes for the time before I got injured and has only been further reinforced as a consequence. People will talk. They always have. And they always will.
Nor do I want anybody to feel sorry for me just because I can’t walk and have to use a wheelchair whenever I leave the house. Upon hearing my story many people look at me with pity in their eyes and sympathy painted in broad brushstrokes across their faces, telling me how genuinely sorry they are.
At no point haven’t I wasted any time in the ensuing years wishing I was blessed with any special abilities or was more like the fantastic Zebrafish, native to streams and rivers in the Himalayas and the rest of the Indian sub-continent, with its remarkable ability to recover full movement just 4 weeks after an injury to its spinal cord.
I sit here in a wheelchair, to all intents and purposes just another unfortunate, a brain-damaged paraplegic but also someone who hasn’t changed at all as a person beyond the superficial and an inability to stand up under my own strength.
If I ever make the mistake of feeling sorry for myself just once on this personal odyssey, I have no doubt that I will be lost into an ugly world of self-pity and despair.
最初に、皆さん大歓迎です。このウェブサイトは、私がT12脊髄損傷と一緒に暮らし初めてからの物語を後世に残すために作ったものです。私は昭和４６年にイギリスのマンチェスターの南にあるハイドで生まれたオリバー・ジョナサン・エッカーズリーです。