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. Yes, my life has been turned on its head and is now completely different to what it had been before that fateful November morning. This is no attempt to burden anyone with tales of woe and bemoan my misfortune, far from it, I am eternally grateful to have been given a second chance at living. Previously I had travelled around Asia on business, in a position of relative importance at an International firm in the centre of Tokyo, now I’ve been laid off and hardly ever leave the house. But, far more than mine, my wife’s life has changed immeasurably. From newlywed to now supporting the household by doing a job of work and then caring for me when she comes home at night. I hate being a burden on her and the consequent feelings of being diminished as a person in her eyes, but all notions of self, go out of the window when I realise just how much I owe her and how grateful I am for everything she does for me each and every day.
Living with paralysis isn’t easy, but I’m not going to pretend to be the hero of this story. Living with a disabled husband almost twice her weight, what Miko does each and every day is heroic. I am completely reliant on her. Living with me isn’t straightforward, caring for me is incredibly complex, there’s no textbook to follow. There’s no do this and do that, then he’ll have fully recovered. At the moment, there is no cure for Spinal Cord Injury, all that we do is try, knowing that if other people have managed to recover then why can’t I?
I am humbled by her faith that together we can defy the odds. Like everyone, I have my down days and it’s Miko that keeps me positive. Front and centre of everything, pushing for everything that benefits me, keeping the care team and medical staff on their toes. Managing the household, taking charge of my care, driving my rehabilitation forward and going out to work on top of all that.
The job she does is incredible, “in sickness and in health” and all that. Lucky to get 5 or 6 hours sleep most nights, her relentlessness and passion is inspirational. We’ve come forward unbelievably far, considering that there’s no special funding available for my rehabilitation or money available to help keep the room full of all the necessary training equipment beyond the regular walking frames and parallel bars. What price could you put on walking, expensive rehabilitation centres exist and we’ve considered them but with no insurance money because my injury wasn’t accident related they aren’t really practical to join. Thanks to her dedication, I don’t need to give in yet.
As we go along, I will do my best to explain all the technical stuff that is bound to come up. Please understand and accept that my explanations don’t come from a medical perspective, just from personal experience and the burgeoning understanding that comes from actually living with a Spinal Cord Injury. So, I’ll take that as a convenient, if not slightly clumsy opportunity to segue into the topic that will keep turning up throughout this book, what is the key to my injury, the Spinal Cord and what does it actually do? Let me take time out here and try my best to explain everything as far as I have been able to understand it.
Basically, the Spinal Nerves are like a slender, fragile vine made of highly sensitive tissue and billions of neurons. The spinal cord is like a living extension of your brain running down, through your spine. It’s also one of the most important parts of the human body, by connecting your brain to your body and facilitating the transmission of vital nerve signals that allow you to do everything from picking up a pen to walking across the room.
The brain and the spinal cord makes up what is known as the central nervous system. The brain in charge of our thoughts, interpretations of the external environment through senses and physical movements. The spinal cord acts as the main route of communication between the rest of the body and the brain. Spinal cord injuries cause disruption to the passage of information between the brain and other body parts, causing paralysis. The spinal cord is not one unified cord, but actually, a bundle of nerves sending and receiving a vast amount of signals from all over the body. It starts at the base of your brain, runs down the backbone, and terminates between your first and second lumbar vertebrae, in the lower back.
Not only does the spinal cord act as the route for all nerve signals travelling between the brain and the body, but many receptors for pain and other stimulus communicate with the spinal cord through peripheral nerves. These small fibrous nerves cover the whole body and send constant communication from all over the body back to the brain.
The spinal cord is the central hub for all nerve signals and is also capable of functioning independently of the brain to send messages, that don’t arise in the brain but in the spine itself, directly to the muscles when the need arises. For the classic, knee jerk reflex test, with a Doctor tapping a small rubber mallet just below the knee to look for the reflex reaction, here the reflex loop never reaches the brain and no conscious thought goes into the consequent movement of the leg below the knee, here the loop only gets as far as the spinal cord which determines the extent of the reaction.
At the same time, the spinal cord is responsible for transmitting messages that control not only voluntary movements such as walking or opening a door but also involuntary movements, made without conscious decision making such as emptying the bladder and bowels. It’s is also far smaller than you might think, considering just how important it is. Performing a vital role at only about 45cm in length and only about half a centimetre wide, it gets the job done without taking a lot of space.
The Spinal Cord is essentially made up of the same material, although organised differently, to the brain. The grey matter comprising the outer portion of the brain’s physical material and the white matter that contains the wiring for communication between the brain and other structures. In the spinal cord, the grey matter can be found in the inner part of the cord. Grey matter is the accumulation of neurons that deal with either motor or sensory function. The grey matter is mainly composed of neuronal cell bodies and unmyelinated axons. Axons are the processes that extend from neuronal cell bodies, carrying signals between those bodies. In the grey matter, these axons are mainly unmyelinated, meaning they are not covered by a whitish-coloured, fatty protein called myelin. White matter in the spinal cord is sometimes called superficial tissue because it is located in the outer regions of the brain and spinal cord. Principally comprised up of myelin, a sort of protective coating for neural axons, made of lipid tissue that appears white in a freshly dissected brain. White matter also contains lots of glial cells, acting as the glue of the Central Nervous System to keep everything stuck properly together.
The spinal column, more commonly called the backbone, is made up primarily of vertebrae, spinal discs, and the spinal cord itself. At birth, the spinal column comprises 40% of the total length of the infant, which is also identical to the proportion in an adult. However, the average length of the spinal column in the new-born is just 24cm. The spinal column grows 50% in length during the baby’s first year of life. Over the following 4 years, the backbone will continue to grow another 15 cm reaching a length of about 50cm in length. From ages 5-10, the spine grows an additional 10 cm. Once puberty is reached and until the age of 18, the backbone will typically grow another 20 cm in males and 15 cm in females.
Here, it would be important to distinguish between the Spinal Cord and the Spinal Column and I hope I haven’t caused any confusion by diving into the description of them here, virtually side by side as it were. So, please let me clear up any confusion here, by starting at the beginning. Having grown together at about the same rate in early embryonic development, with the spinal cord extending the entire length of the spinal column at about the third month. As further development continues, the body and the spinal column continue to grow at a much greater rate than the spinal cord proper. Causing displacement of the lower parts of the spinal cord with relation to the spinal column itself. The outcome of this uneven growth is that the adult spinal cord extends only to the level of the first or second lumbar vertebrae, with the nerves exiting through the same intervertebral foramina as they did during embryonic development. This growth of the nerve roots occurs within the vertebral canal and results in the lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal roots that extend to their appropriate vertebral levels.
All spinal nerves, except the first, exit below their corresponding vertebrae. In the cervical segments, with 7 cervical vertebrae and 8 cervical nerves, the first seven nerves exit above their vertebrae whereas the last nerve exits below the final vertebra. From there on, each subsequent nerve leaves the cord below the corresponding vertebra. In the thoracic and upper lumbar regions, the difference between the vertebrae and cord level is three segments. Which means that the root filaments of spinal cord segments have to travel longer distances to reach the corresponding intervertebral foramen from which the spinal nerves emerge, ending with the lumbosacral roots which are also known as the cauda equina.
With the spinal cord itself achieving most of its growth in the first 5 years of development, growing in those initial years to reach close to its full length of about 45 cm. Extending from the foramen magnum, where it is continuous with the medulla oblongata, to the level of the first or second lumbar vertebra. Below that level, the vertebral canal is occupied by spinal nerve roots and meninges. Last of all, a fibrous strand, the filum terminale, continues from the spinal cord down to the coccyx.
The body keeps growing around the spinal cord and it stays the pretty much the same size for the rest of a person’s life. This closely follows the development of the brain which also rushes to finish growing by the age of 5, with 90% of development achieved by that age. Studies have shown that a 5-year-old’s brain and spinal cord uses twice as much glucose, the energy that fuels the brain, than that of a full-grown adult. Meaning that our bodies cannot afford to grow too quickly in these early years because of the demand on resources by the developing central nervous system. With body growth grinding nearly to a halt at the ages when the development of the central nervous system is happening at a lightning pace because the brain and spinal cord are sapping up the bulk of available resources. Meaning that around a certain age it becomes more difficult to guess a toddler or young child’s age by their size. Instead, you have to listen to their speech and closely watch their behaviour to adequately determine just how old they might be.
At the moment, though personally, I might be weaker in body than I have ever been before, I am also far stronger in spirit. A strength of spirit that has taught me to embrace, accept and confront my injuries head-on. To stare down the evil demon that has taken up residence in my spine. Acknowledgement is power, just as the #MeToo movement has taught there’s a positive power that comes from confronting demons, so too I absolutely refuse to give in to mine. I am determined to keep pushing forward as long as there’s a chance left that I might be able to beat my injuries. Trust me, if I was chasing the impossible my wife who is forever grounded in reality would have told me even if I was blinded to the truth and couldn’t yet see it for myself.
I have never been a particularly emotional person and don’t think I probably ever will be, but after my injury, I have found it a lot easier to cry. Almost as if the gap in my spinal cord had been replaced by a big chunk of empathy and I cry my eyes out watching even the most obvious emotion-button pushing movies. I shed an awful lot of tears in the early days, trying to come to terms with my injury. I cried the proverbial river, to try and let all the conflict and negativity flow downstream far away from me. It’s far better to allow that negative energy swim away before it takes root and starts to fester like a malignant wound.
There is ongoing debate as to the assumed cathartic benefits of having a good cry and despite not being particularly in touch with my innermost self, I did find the tears I shed cleansing. My injury doesn’t give me carte blanche to change my personality, to become a cry-baby or to be mean and cruel to others but in coming to terms with my life-changing injuries I don’t think anyone could really begrudge me shedding a few quiet tears on my own. For perhaps the first time ever, I wasn’t embarrassed by my tears. It felt freeing and entirely natural, by crying to release all the pent-up stress and toxic emotions. As an organic expression of a wide range of emotions, it didn’t seem absurd at all to be sat there in my wheelchair and cry, to seek release and comfort. Crying allowed me to be in touch with my emotions on a deeper level. Crying is the physical manifestation of our internal emotions, of our thoughts. My brain sent out that signal to the body for a reason; so I let it come to be and tried not to treat crying like it was a terrible sin. When all it really was, was a purely physical means of purging my emotional being. So, I let myself cry, let my eyes flood with salty tears and my mind’s chatter fade into the background. I just cried and once I’d finished I felt far better and much more alive.
Laughter has helped too, it’s a wonderful defence mechanism against feeling sorry for yourself. Travelling by subway into town one day, I had a handful of able-bodied people literally push past me, in my wheelchair, and take the escalator upstairs leaving me trapped and waiting on the platform. Frustration is best deflected with idle humour and I suggested to my wife that I take the escalator instead of them. Impossible of course and not side-splittingly funny either but humour, even bad humour, is an antidote and has helped a lot in stopping me from feeling sorry for myself.
Sure, it’s fun to share a good laugh. But did you know it can actually improve your health? It’s true: laughter is strong medicine. It draws people together in ways that trigger healthy physical and emotional changes in the body. Laughter strengthens your immune system, boosts mood, diminishes pain, and protects us from the damaging effects of stress. As children, I’m sure we used to laugh all the time, but as adults life gets more serious and we become embarrassed by raucous displays of mirth and merriment. By seeking out more opportunities for humour and laughter, though, we can improve our emotional health, strengthen our relationships, find greater happiness and even add a few more years to our lives.
Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and conflict. Laughter activates the body’s natural relaxation response. It’s like internal jogging, providing a good massage to all the organs while also toning the abdominal muscles. Nothing works faster or more dependably to bring your mind and body back into balance than a good laugh. Humour lightens your mood, it’s inspiring and connecting, helps keep you grounded and helps release anger. Best of all this priceless medicine is fun, free and doesn’t need a prescription.
Laughter relaxes the whole body, relieving stress and tension in the muscles for over 30 minutes after. Laughter also decreases stress hormones, increases immune cell counts and infection-fighting antibodies, to increase your resistance to disease. It also triggers the release of naturally occurring chemicals that can promote a sense of well-being and also act to relieve pain. When you laugh there’s a contraction of muscles, which increases blood flow and oxygenation. This stimulates the heart and lungs and triggers the release of endorphins that help you to feel more relaxed both physically and emotionally. Laughter acts to improve the function of blood vessels, increasing blood flow and burning calories. Also, nothing diffuses anger and conflict faster than laughter. Looking at the funny side can put problems into perspective and enable you to move on from confrontations without holding onto bitterness or resentment.
Laughter makes you feel good. And the good feeling that you get when you laugh remains with you even after the laughter subsides. Humour helps you keep a positive, optimistic outlook through difficult situations, disappointments, and loss. More than just a respite from sadness and pain, laughter gives you the courage and strength to find new sources of meaning and hope. Even in the most difficult of times, a laugh, or even simply a smile, can go a long way toward making you feel better. And laughter really is contagious, just hearing laughter primes your brain and readies you to smile and join in the fun.
Studies support laughter as a great way to get outside the downward spiral to depression. Being unhappy can become a pattern or a mind-set if we don’t step outside of ourselves occasionally. By being a witness to our situation rather than allowing ourselves to feel the victim it’s possible to find humour in any situation and see it with fresh eyes. Even forced laughter releases a cocktail of hormones, neuropeptides and dopamine that can start to improve your mood. People who are laughing don’t experience less pain, however, they report being less bothered by the pain they do experience.
It’s not about changing pain levels. The amount of pain remains the same, but your perceived pain levels reduce and your belief that you can cope increases. Laughter by itself isn’t the solution but it can help a person overcome discomfort. There’s a good reason why TV sitcoms use laugh tracks: laughter is contagious. The discovery of mirror neurons, causing you to smile when someone smiles at you, give further credence to the notion that laughter is contagious. You’re many times more likely to laugh around other people than when you’re alone. And the more laughter you bring into your own life, the happier you and those around you will feel.
Sharing humour is half the fun, in fact, most laughter doesn’t come from hearing jokes, but rather simply from spending time with friends and family. And it’s this social aspect that plays such an important role in the health benefits of laughter. You can’t enjoy a laugh with other people unless you take the time to really engage with them. When you care about someone enough to switch off your phone and really connect face to face, you’re engaging in a process that rebalances the nervous system and puts the brakes on defensive stress responses like ‘fight or flight’. And if you share a laugh as well, you’ll both feel happier, more positive, and more relaxed, even if you’re unable to alter the stressful situation itself.
When it all comes down to it everyone is special in their own way and being injured is not a badge of honour proving that I’m the most special. Even beating this injury won’t make me special and I am not trying to prove that I am, all I can do is take the extra time I’ve been afforded and put value on this painful experience to grow into the person I should have been all along. My injuries are an opportunity for me to take stock of my life and channel my new found strength, nearly dying might be the ultimate growth opportunity but it’s also an experience that I strongly recommend against.
It’s all too easy to fall into a dark funk of self-pity and despair. It takes real guts and fortitude to fight back from the edge of the pit that is always waiting nearby, prepared to swallow you whole. Feeling that everything is against you and wanting to start a war against the world because it seems far easier than declaring peace on an unfair world. Nobody benefits if ever, anyone gives in to negativity. Push those thoughts out of your mind, nobody should ever be called useless or worthless, those kinds of words shouldn’t even be directed inwardly towards myself, just because of a few things I currently might not be able to do.
With damage to my spine as well as damage to two different areas of my brain, perhaps I have reason to be angry. It would have been incredibly easy to have been full of anger, recrimination and regret. I had been making real progress, getting fitter and healthier than I had been for years, losing weight, going to the gym and paying attention to what I ate, but it had been all too little, too late. In trying to tough it out for a few days and putting off going to the hospital, I had made the biggest error of judgement in my life. Understanding that fact, allowed me to move beyond anger in a matter of weeks. As low as I’d fallen, there’s no point in beating myself up even further. There was no point in asking too many questions, when everything I could do was miraculous. Instead of being disconcerted I was encouraged by even the smallest of things and quickly developed a different mind-set. Training like the Olympic athlete I never was, focused on making the next training session the best one ever and using that impetus to move forward, to keep getting better and better.
When it all comes down to it, life isn’t supposed to be fair. It was never even advertised as being fair and if it was all entirely equitable and the best person always succeeds that raises a lot of awkward questions about my effort and ability. So if I accept that things aren’t fair and understanding that despite dreaming of it since I was a little child, I was never going to play professionally for Manchester City, then all that is left is to change my mind-set and become the change that I want to see in my world. It’s simple, if you don’t like something, change it and if I can’t change it, accept that fact and then change the way I think about it.
Although it might be true that life throws unanticipated challenges at everyone at some time in their lives and these challenges can alter the way we view the world. It is also true that change certainly doesn’t need to be permanent. The bottom line is that only I can choose how to respond to the challenges that life has thrown up in my direction. It’s my decision how long to grieve, how long to brood, how long to stay angry, and how long I choose to be happy. So, I got over ideas of life being unfair, it’s of no benefit to anybody, at all. Notions of fairness don’t make any sense, I can’t make life fair. I can only get angry and vengeful, but to inflict even more suffering on myself in the name of being fair and redressing the balance, and produce no demonstrable change, then life still wouldn’t be fair.
Bad things happen to good people every day, there’s no point even trying to rationalise it or allow any perceived sense of injustice to paint me as a victim. My traumatic experience doesn’t make me special, only the resilience to survive and move forward can set me apart. We are all victims of something at some point in our lives, by stepping out of the victim mind-set and viewing myself as a survivor, I believe that I will find it easier to move forward with my life. By focusing on the future and not the past, adapting to my new circumstances and developing a new outlook on life. My Spinal Cord Injury is something to adapt to, not be defeated by. It was my opportunity to take a good look at my life and change the way I approached it. It doesn’t matter if I am disabled or not, all that matters is that I live my life to the fullest and hopefully leave some love in the hearts of my nearest and dearest. It was my decision to move forward into what seemed like a dystopian future, to try and make my world a better one by living in it with a heart full of gratitude, humility and positivity.
When it all comes down to it, negative thoughts only get in the way of positive change. Negativity is hard to escape, we’re surrounded by it, throughout the media that colours our lives. Turn on the TV news and get a concentrated 30-minute dose of death, war, violence and disaster. That doesn’t mean I should just refuse to leave the house and ignore everything bad that might be happening in the world outside. What we hear and see on the TV, the unfairness that happens in our personal lives are typically only the gloomy extremes in a world of mostly positive, kind, and pleasant interactions. Fortunately for most people the good outweighs the bad, just think on a typical day and the number of times that someone smiles at you, says thank you, washes your clothes, gives you a hug or a pat on the back, compliments you, says they love you, picks up something you dropped, drives you somewhere, or any of the hundreds of things that people do freely for others. Now compare that to the unfortunate or negative experiences you have in a typical day. It’s just more common to dwell on the bad than to remember the good.
Instead, we choose to focus on the negative because too often we are controlled by the anger we feel. Anger and injustice rarely prompt productive or positive results, it can take calm and careful planning to respond positively to an injustice. Anger and outrage are inevitable and entirely normal responses when injustice happens to anybody, but it’s my responsibility to control those powerful and potentially dangerous emotions, and it’s my choice of which direction I take to create change. If I allow the negativity and unfairness that happens in the world to capture my attention, consume my thoughts, and control my emotions, I’m going to find it difficult, if not impossible to feel good about the world, myself and the part I still play in it.
It is, of course true, that those people who don’t allow the unfairness of life to make them chronically bitter, angry, or miserable don’t live their lives measurably better than others. They simply adopt and practice a mind-set that helps them avoid being pulled down and consumed by life’s challenges. It’s not always easy, and for most people, it takes practice. However, anyone who chooses to do it can do it. So, before you get angry next time, just relax and take a few deep breaths and ask yourself if it’s really worth it. The behaviour of others says more about them than it does you, rise above and don’t allow yourself to get dragged down to their level. Be conscious of what you can and can’t control. You have no control over the choices that people make. The only thing you have control over is how you respond. So before you expend a lot of needless energy, ask yourself if this is something you have control over. We can’t change the past, we can only try to address the issues that we encounter and make a difference by being clear-headed, patient, and consistent. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, what’s important is that we try to move beyond them so we don’t allow the bad things that might happen to us, to diminish us as people.
Being positive and taking positive action is a choice. Being happy and doing things that make you happy is a choice. So are being bitter, angry, vengeful, and miserable. It’s all about how you choose to approach life. A bad thing happened to me and took away my ability to walk and yes, it was a terrible, heart-breaking experience to live through. It made me sad, it made me angry and it made me question my life. Perhaps these are all normal emotions to feel for a period of time after something negative happens in our lives. Like everyone else, I grieve losses. I regret my mistakes. I got the stuffing knocked out of me, emotionally, when I woke up in hospital and slowly came to realise that I couldn’t walk anymore. However, at some point, I had to make a decision. Do I want to live in the past, or do I want to live in the present and work toward a positive future?
I have never been a jealous person and becoming one now just because I can’t walk doesn’t make any sense at all. Heavens know I tried, staring out of the hospital window, channelling my antipathy towards the people walking around outside the shops while I couldn’t. But such irrational thinking didn’t sit well with me and didn’t make any sense at all, jealousy is like being irrationally angry but with none of the release. Deep down, I’ve never been a particularly jealous person and being jealous of others just because they could do something that I couldn’t is not something I could ever really imagine myself wasting my time indulging in.
Sure, I could spend all my time convinced that my life had turned into a bad joke and allow myself to be consumed with anger and frustration at how everything was so unfair. When I was younger my sporting heroes were people like Paul Lake, Wendell Tyler, Terry Flanagan, Mike Watkinson, Terao, JPR Williams and Rey Ordonez because they could all do amazing things that I could only dream about. So why should I be jealous of people who could walk just because I couldn’t? I’m happy for them because nobody deserves to live with the uncertainty and turmoil of paralysis. The choice is clear, I could snarl and seethe over their good fortune for not getting injured or I could feel happy for them. Which one do you think is going to give me more peace of mind? So, I chose to take all that frustration and anger and just let it go and never let it back in, to fill in the gap by getting busy, working to try and get myself better.
Living with my wife, who I love completely and want to grow older with, it’s very important to me that I don’t allow myself to become changed any more than I already am. I am sure that feelings of resentment and antipathy to others would spill out into my outlook and behaviour. Giving in to feelings of jealousy, directing negative energy randomly outward toward others would only serve to make me even more difficult to live with than my disability already makes me. It would only diminish my shine and take the lustre off our relationship. It won’t fix any problems, it will only add to them. I’m not jealous of her or anybody else’s ability to walk, I’m only looking for her advice and insight to help me get back on my feet. After all, this injury is my fault for not going to hospital on time and I am happier to bear it myself than pass it on to anybody else.
After all, being jealous and twisted up in knots inside isn’t going to change anything. Instead of feeling better, I’ll only start to feel even worse with my stomach acids kicking in, leaving me complaining and moaning all the time and that’s not good for anyone at all, least of all me. The world isn’t against me, I just got unlucky and when it all comes down to it, I am happy being me. I’m not bitter, I just want to get better. On top of all that, it will only serve to make little problems even bigger. With feelings of negativity only serving to increase the volume on everything. If I allow negativity to take over, instead of talking things through, one day I am going to find myself hollering at the top of my lungs about some insignificant, perceived problem and that would be as completely unproductive as it’s possible to get.
Jealousy may be a powerful emotion but it’s most certainly never going to sit quietly and enjoy the company of logic. When I’m in a jealous fog, I don’t think clearly, I don’t express myself well either. So take a deep breath, calm down, count to ten and see if I can’t come back to myself. Because if I don’t make the change, my jealousy and irrational behaviour runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If all I did in my imagined, toxic fog of jealousy, was to walk around convinced that everyone else was just doing things to spite me, viewing everything that happens as a slight against me, to allow my behaviour to change so much that all I would achieve is to push my friends and loved ones further away.
It’s hard to see, but when you’re jealous of other people, you’re being disrespectful. Your jealousy speaks volumes about you, and the things it says are generally terribly unkind. Ultimately, jealous individuals implicitly accuse others of being liars and detract from the good things that may have happened to them. Such behaviour is simply small-minded and surely your loved ones deserve far more than that. Especially when that streak of jealousy you have chosen to paint yourself with only makes you look bad and diminishes you as a person. Caving into jealous feelings only proves that you’ve got a lot of work to do on yourself. It indicates a lack of confidence and an emotional immaturity that needs addressing straight away. Face it, not everyone you meet is going to like you, nothing to worry about there, that’s their loss. Get over yourself, we’re not meant to be bosom buddies with everyone on the planet. If they look hard enough anyone that tries hard enough can find ammunition to use against me. Let them hate me for my nationality, the colour of my skin, my indeterminate Northern elocution or even the wheelchair I sit in to get around in town. I am not going to allow them to hate me because jealousy has warped my sense of self. That’s lame and I’m better than that!
I am fortunate to be a very much lapsed Christian because even in the Bible, the tome that is purported, by many people throughout the part of the world that I come from, to be the thing to lift spirits and turn thoughts positive can be utterly denigrating for anyone unfortunate enough to be labelled as handicapped. With the denigration of disability wired into basic human instinct as a way to avoid contagens and pathogens, just as our terror and revulsion fuels much of the whole Hollywood horror industry, so the Old Testament Bible writers have blurred notions of physical purity with spiritual purity and talk in Proverbs 26:7 (English Standard Version) about lame legs being useless, where Deuteronomy 23:1 (New Revised Standard Version) prevents those physically incapacitated from being admitted to the assembly of the lord and Leviticus 21:17-23 (King James Version) goes even further as to disbar anyone who might have a blemish or anything superfluous; be blind, lame, flat nosed, broken handed or with dwarfism from entering the holy sanctuaries. Fortunately, I have never been particularly devout at all and can continue on ahead with my ignorance of that kind of Old Testament thinking, just as a lot of devout believers chose to turn a blind eye to the more unsavoury passages that are contained in that good book but to be completely honest any adequate discussion of all that would all be best left to a completely different book and a completely different author too.