A worrying start to the day.

I`d forgotten just how much a headache used to hurt…until today. Bloody hell did it knock the crap out of me. I woke up this morning around seven and it was like there was a goblin in my head knocking hell out of a gong, I felt sick, no energy to move and in fact when I did move I had to put my head back down, NASTY. Wifey made me comfortable and turned out the bedside lamp, the light was unbearable which made my wife ask me the question “Is this your Dysreflexia? Should we be worried?”

For those of you, which would be most I suspect, who don’t know what Dysreflexia is I shall try to explain. It is actually called Autonomic Dysreflexia and it affects people who have a level of injury at the 6th thoracic vertebrae (T6) or above, in simple terms the body raises the blood pressure to let the sufferer know that there is a problem that can not be communicated through the normal nerve channels. It is a life threatening condition that must be dealt with by initially taking emergency medication which we carry on a medical warning card and then ambulance crew who will then take you to the hospital. It is therefore very important that we learn the symptoms to identify it before it gets out of hand and possibly results in death. One of the symptoms is a thumping headache, good times eh?

So, I decided to stay in bed whilst my wife took the kids to school and my youngest to nursery to see if I could get rid of the pain. Eventually, at half one I woke feeling a little better and had a soak in the bath. Half an hour later and I was right as rain again. Unfortunately we had to cancel my acupuncturist which I hate having to do but she is very understanding. Treatment will resume next week as normal. We had a visit from a med-equip guy today with some riser blocks for my sofa and my bed. This will mean that it will not be such a struggle for me to transfer from my bed to my chair until I get stronger and then we can remove them.

Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say that nothing else has happened today. But I am going to tell you something about Wednesday. As I said on Wednesday’s Blog, I went to my friends place for a coffee. Now her husband and her father built some wooden blocks to support some wooden ramps they had made so that I can get in to the kitchen and the lower part of the house. This is the only way in for me in my power chair due to the width. On Wednesday when I got there to save her moving the vehicles from the garage door, she got the ramps to get me on to the covered area at the back of the house. After a lot of her messing around trying different ways to achieve our aim, I sat in the garden under an umbrella whilst she sat under the covered area. You see, again, it is not just that I can not walk. I hope slowly to make people aware of the many things that change for the paralysed person. In this case, I can not visit friends like I use to.

So, back to now. I am sat with my wife and my eldest daughter watching a film and get this, for the first time since December last year….I’M ONLY ON THE SOFA!! That’s right, my sofa is up on blocks like a stolen car with the wheels removed which has meant that I can now transfer on to it to watch films. You have no idea how great this makes me feel.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to get more done to my website for my fundraising. I really hope you will check it out when it’s done.

Thanks for reading, and goodnight all.

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