and a Happy New Year!!

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

So Happy New Year to everybody! We rang in the New Year watching people standing in the no doubt freezing cold weather watching some pretty fireworks whilst Techiecarer & I sat at home with one very excitable bunny bounding around us, he seemed so very pleased to ring in the New Year.

There was some lovely times this last year & some sad especially with my Dad’s passing & although it is part & parcel of my life, it is truly ridiculous to see how many hospital visits I’ve had.

I’m not for resolutions. Promises that so often you don’t keep to yourself. However as always I have things I want to do but on the understanding that I may not complete some of the things I would like to do this year but that doesn’t mean I never will. I also know that I will no doubt do things that I hadn’t even planned for this coming year.

However the main thing I want to try & do this year, is not to care about peoples’ judgement as much. I always try to be a nice person & be someone who cares but when I know that I am doing all that I can & that I need the help & support that I receive I still however get judgement. For me, it makes you feel like you have to explain, to justify yourself, where there is in fact nothing you need to justify yourself for. I have always known that for some they will never accept how things are regardless of what you say. So I’m going to try to conserve my energy & not defend something I don’t need to defend. I also want to make sure that I don’t let people define my worth by my disability or my lack of a job, my disability is part of me but it is not the only part & that just because I don’t have these things does not make me worthless nor mean I have no purpose.

I also want to write more. Manageable amounts that aren’t necessarily huge essays & to not worry about what I’m writing as much as I do & to improve upon it. For me with my dyslexia I have always found speaking a breeze but writing is a lot harder especially coupled with brain fog & fatigue. There are also so many small things I’m thinking about focusing on & will mull it over in the coming days & I know that Techiecarer has his own challenges ahead for this year but I know how very I proud of him I am.

To everyone I wish you a very happy new year & for everyone to be kind to themselves this coming year. To be helpful to others, to stand up for whats right & for the disabled community to support each other, to not allow people to create a climate where disabled are made to feel inadequate.

No one should define you but you.

A Spoonie body, politics & a cute fluffy bunny.

So I haven’t been able to do much that I’ve wanted to do recently as my body has been taking its sweet time to decide whether or not to heal after my surgery & because I have been off my arthritis medication for so long my body is taking a real battering with a lot of inflammation in addition to what I normally have. Also with my arthritis flaring up the fatigue has been worse with it. Fatigue as always is so fricking inconvenient, with you not being asleep nor awake, losing hours at a time.

It’s not been made easier when I have had to go out, mostly to hospital appointments & such. It’s not like its a new thing, ever since just before the last general election this kind of occurrence happens quite often whilst we’re out. When I get on the bus people look at me & see a girl with a stick & more often than not will take more time to judge the legitimacy of my condition than see that I’m about to topple over because the driver hasn’t waited until I have found a seat & I’m struggling to find a seat, as someone is lounging across the disabled seat or the “i’d like a bit more legroom seat”

So often I see these judgmental faces of people that don’t know me. It is often that people won’t offer you a seat until they have seen you nearly topple over because the bus driver doesn’t see you or is impatient and even then it is often begrudgingly.

Often me & Mr TechieCarer will be sitting on one of the disabled seats just waiting for the glares, the comments & even altercations to occur. The glares always happen even though my stick is clearly visible. We have started to talk to loudly about my condition to each other which usually suffices to quiet them down & realise that their judgement is incorrect. We have now come to the point that we will stick up for ourselves, even though we shouldn’t have to because arthritis & all the other conditions I have are not my fault & I have nothing to be sorry about.

I know this isn’t just me & although I have had people be verbally abusive, apart from one guy threatening to sit on me, thankfully nothing physical has happened. I also am grateful that there are people that are kind & thoughtful & they restore my glimmer of faith in humanity every time. I know that other disabled people have delt with much worse, thankfully my local bus company have started a zero tolerance policy towards disability hate crime which is greatly needed to show that this isn’t tolerated.

Another topic I have seen people have a problem with is people on benefits that have a mobile phone &/or animals. I might go into more detail about this at a later time but some people are more obsessed about other people having mobile phones or pets than being happy in their own life.

They don’t understand that mobile phones keep disabled people in contact with the hospital, Doctors & Carers & let them stay in contact with the outside world when their condition doesn’t allow them to go outside. Similarly pets give people confidence, comfort & companionship. They can also greatly help a disabled person reduce their awareness of their pain, even if only for a brief moment.

http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/just-watch-this-please.html

This links in with an article where Sue Marsh highlights a film which shows how vital the Independent Living Fund is for people to provide basic things that able bodied people take for granted. It is also shown very clearly how much pets mean to disabled people & that no one should be this frightened of losing support.

I can also say after we sadly lost our bunny at such a young age, we did get another. Hes now about 7 months old & is doing really well apart from a very lucky scrape around a week ago.

We noticed his head was tilting to the side & one eye was rolling to the back of his head. I knew this wasn’t a good sign (head tilt) so we rushed him to the vet & the vet said it was either concision or Encephalitis (inflammation) caused by the parasite e.Cuniculi. They believe that over half of rabbits carry the parasite & are asymptomatic all their lives, with about 6% where the parasite becomes a problem causing inflammation. They think that its more likely to be e.Cuniculi because even if you held his head his eye still continued to move. He was given an anti infllammatory injection & panacur to control the e.Cuniculi.

Amazingly I can say that within 1hr & half his head tilt had resolved, as my vet said you wouldn’t know he had head tilt only hours before. He will still have his panacur for a while yet but with head tilt it is so vital that they get to the vet early. Although head tilt can be caused by a varying degree of underlying issues, for e.Cuniculi the quicker they get to the vet, the quicker they get anti inflammatory medication, the better the chance of reducing permanent damage.

So here is the little cutie




And finally the WoW Petition surpassed 100,000 signatures! I do not believe that the government will necessarily do anything positive that the petition asks for but the more we can highlight these issues & the more we can bring these issues to the attention of the general public, the better they will be informed of the injustices that are occurring.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154

14# Weekend Cute, Humour & Awesome.

I hereby call this meeting to order of the 10th annual grand bunny council.

First item on the agenda how is the progress on world domination?

(I do not own the images but respect the awesome)