Anniversaries and celebrating how far you've come!

 I always acknowledge my anniversary of my accident, celebrate it even. I know this is hard for some to understand, but i think everyone should have at least one day a year where they look at where they are: where they came from and where they want to be. New Year also works well, birthdays have their own issues! This is how i keep focussed in what i want out of a life i just happen to share with Pain. I was a little overwhelmed by the response from my friends and family - people who have travelled at least some of the journey with me. Some of those people didn't know, which is a good thing. It means that i am living a life worth living. That i am not just KJane in Pane; disabled KJane; helpless, suffering, tortured KJane in Pain. I am KJane the dancer, the artist, the traveller! LIVING... An annoying Pain patient who exceeds expectations; who is extremely hard on herself, suffers no fools, no matter where, or who, they are! I like who i have become, with all my eccentricities and faults. I trust in my own emotional strength to overcome adversity. Everything has a solution if you work hard and think outside the box. This hard perfectionist has learned to embrace imperfection! 

Validity rules for the new Games: Turning a corner...

Finally, an answer. But having my suspicions confirmed, did it make me feel any better? Did it make a difference at all? I can't say that it did, to be honest. I still had Pain, I still couldn't walk; I wasn't really any closer to a solution or a way to work around this new disability. Well, not so much a new one anymore. It was 2 years now I had mobility issues, since that day when it all fell apart. Being right and knowing the answers in this didn't really make a huge difference. Where to go from here?

I returned to the Netherlands once again, with a wheelchair posse of airport staff and the sad realisation that this is the reality of my travelling future. This was the future of being disabled. While it sounds quite confronting, it really wasn't as depressing as it sounds. I could still do things, I could still be mobile and live. A wheelchair, a walking crutch or stick, really what did it matter if I was still out there in life?

THE DISABLED CLOAK OF INVISIBILITY...

Finding my new identity. I was still me, surely, wasn't I? But how much of being out there in life was I really? I was stuck at home mostly. Every time I wanted to go out for simple things, like groceries or bread, it became such a huge undertaking that a simple trip would take me days if not a week, to recover from. God forbid if I forgot sonmething - if I forgot something and was downstairs, so sad too bad, there was no going back up! It was so difficult that even breaking a trip down into rest-break paused increments took so much effort; with the impossibility of the task soon becoming evident. I still did it occasionally, pushing myself to breaking point if only to get out of the house for a while.

One day I pushed so far that I came home, cried for hours and it took me nearly 3 weeks before I could even think of going out again. I was so sick of and so over always struggling, everything being so difficult, costing me so much energy that I just didn't have anymore. The unbelievable rudeness on public transport. By all means sit in that seat for disabled and old people if you want. But please, keep your eyes open for anyone who may need that seat. Don't wait to be asked to stand by someone else; because I can tell you that the very last thing I want to do is admit to anyone I need a seat for invalids! Frankly, you shouldn't need to be asked because one day, you could be that person who needs that seat. And don't pretend you can't see what is around you! Headphones don't make you invisible, neither does staring at your phone. Just being disabled is all you really need to become invisible...

Updates and excuses PART I: THE SHAME GAME

And yes... the shame of making this post some 2 1/2 years after the last, my biggest shame of all!!!

It's strange how fast time passes, especially after you hit 25! Pain and I have been together for 13 years now, though it feels like yesterday I was celebrating 10 years. A theme of this piece is relationships that come and go. Strangely, of all my relationships and friendships over the years, I have probably had a relationship with Pain longer than I have known many of the people I know now - Pain and I seem married for life now. Brings a whole new meaning to being shackled to the ball and chain...

 These past few years have been some of the biggest challenges I've faced so far. Perhaps not as difficult as the early years of CRPS, when I didn't really know anything, nor had any experience to draw upon. What I had hoped simply never would happen, has now happened and has become the biggest challenge to my own sense of self. Losing the battle with CRPS. It has spread to my legs now. And I have felt like a huge failure at times, for letting it take over so much of my body!

As someone who values independence in the same way as I value necessities such as water and food; I've needed to adjust what I define as “independence” in order to continue being, well... me. In the early years of having it in my arms, no matter how horrible it was, I still could run away. Maybe not from the pain, but in the physical sense of moving my legs in order to get me somewhere away from wherever I was standing. Now I have CRPS in all four limbs; though it presents more severely in the right side, I seem to have run out of spares!