RantingScienceZebra The rantings of a bitter, twisted, sometimes crippled and rather mad scientist
My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
5 Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.
6 And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for thenwould I fly away, and be at rest.
7 Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. Selah.
8 I would hasten my escape from the windy stormand tempest.
Today has been so epically shit already that I am hiding out in public places so as to avoid suicide. There arent words.
However I am doing displacement activity quite nicely.
So here goes. I hate the Daily Mail. It is, in my opinion, a vile hate filled rag. It has not changed much since it was boldly supporting the British Fascist Movement and backing the wrong Mitford sister.
One of it's current idees fixes is that many things cause or cure cancer. This delightful blog has preserved this vital information for Science.
I am heartened by such dedication.
I am so tired of blogging about my health. It must be very boring for you, dear imaginary reader. I imagine you sitting there thinking "seriously Inky get a life" as you gently rub cocoa butter into your exposed skin, sipping a dirty martini from a chalice carved from an alicorn.
Tomorrow I am seeing my doctor. This poor guy has had to put up with me being his patient for a looong time and you can see his face fall as I walk in.
I have made a list to hand over as I walk in. This allows him control I suppose. I think there are people who visit their GP without a side of A4 close written as a list.
Just to give some insight here it is.
Joint problems.
-spontaneous sublux of hip and shoulder unreduced after 3 weeks
Swollen glands
-submaxillary glands swollen for 6 months. Painfull.
Depression
- suicidal ideation. Active planning of suicide. Anhedonia. Crying. Hopelessness
Fungal infections
- fungal nail infection more than 2 years resists treatment
- hair loss varied regions may be fungal
Retinal heamorrhage
- optician noticed yesterday
- increased clotting times in general
Loose skin
- following weight loss. Very hard to care for. Denotivational.
I summarise a bit for clarity. But in all thsts enough. I wonder what he will pick first? My money is on the depression.
I have decided my next job will be as a magic unicorn herder.
This may come as a surprise to the able bodied but an awful lot of us cripples use sports centres. In fact in terms of numbers and usage it's a thriving market share.
Why is this? Well many people who are retired or on benefits get cheap memberships and us cripples can even get them prescribed. Its a convivial place to go ....and of course there is physio.
To those who have only sprained the odd ankle physio is that annoying stuff you do 30mins a week with the naggy person and forget to do in between. For us zebras physio is the only tool we have to fight our illness. My full physio regime is 2hrs per day of gym. If i am rushed I have a 1hr. The recommendation is even if you can only do 10 mins do it.
So you see the gym is a second home. Over here I use the David Lloyd Leisure centre in Ipswich. This is definitely up the crunchy meusli and range rover end of the market, for instance they advertise taking the advice of nutritionists( who are unqualified and unregulated profit mongers. You would be better asking a cat ) in order to provide a paleo diet (a diet myth based on little to no evidence, heavy on the naturalistic fallacy) but it is convenient. You do pay rather a lot for the use of their facilities. But the facilities are good. I mean fair dos the equipment is clean and well maintained and theres lots of it. No complaints about that at all.
But...
You knew there was a but right?
The clientelle in their yuppie trucks cannot park for toffee. The car park fills up at the time of little johnnies tennis lesson. But only near the door. The far reaches are often empty. Near the door is where the disabled spaces are. The photo shows what normally happens. Some lazy sod parks across the pavement adjacent to the disabled parking and goes off to pilates.
Might not sound like much but that pavement allows us lames to hobble along in safety. We need it. All of it.
So obviously when it happens I complain. And complain
And complain.
And tweet. I mean I even joined twitter ( thats @Inky_r folks) to complain after the 10th complaint resulted in no change.
The response is an email sent to the wrong account and which started off by using my forename despite me not knowing them..hint to young people this is extremely rude. I am Dr Tatus till i tell you different...which says:
" Thank you for your comment card regarding parking. I have tried to call you but have been unable to make contact hence my e-mail.
We are aware that some members choose to park in unacceptable places such as on the pathways and under the oak tree. If we are aware who these members are we do address it with them. Previously we did tannoh the car number plate but of course they knew why we were trying to contact them and ignored the call. We have also put notices on offending cars but if you are going to park there in the first place a notice will not change the behaviour.
The most frustrating thing is that often there are car spaces but members choose to park as close to the club as possible. Recently we have had staff in the car park and this does work as a deterrent but is not always possible with a busy club.
Please be reassured that we are aware of the problem and the frustration it causes with members. I will speak to the management team and see if we can provide a more regular presence in the car park.
I will look for you in the club and then hopefully try and have a further conversation but for the meantime I hope this advises you of some of the actions that we have tried to resolve the problem
"
Now this sounds like an attempt to do stuff doesnt it? Except of course it isnt really looking at the problem. It's creative helplessness. We cannot change their behaviour...
Oh yes you can. Look at it this way, if i decided I was too lazy to go to the loo and repeatedly defecated in the toddler pool I would be guilty of misconduct that denied other members use of the facilities. I would be banned, I suspect, or have my membership suspended. So why is it when lazy middle aged women (observation not misogyny. Generally step or boxercise classes) do exactly the same that there is no effort to make them face consequences. The answer is that the able bodied, disproportionately young staff do not see it as more than an irritation. It is a low priority.
I would say that it appears that David Lloyd Leisure is oblivious to the needs of disabled members and deprioritises them. I say appears, as I have limited data. I do find their employees seem to come from a very limited demographic and would like to see their figures on equal opportunities. I have never seen a receptionist with a mild limp let alone in a wheelchair, and their managers normally have sports science graduate/pro football dropout tattooed on the underside of their identical eyelids. Lets see if we can represent the disabled community a bit? Or would that interfere with their cosy Daily Mail existence in the gated community of the Worried Well. The varied Gluten Free menu options do go nicely with the Social Conscience Free behavioural options after all.
Just as with Bloombergs revamp of London City Airport I suspect that no-one with a disability has ever been asked about operations let alone had an influence on them.
So what would I do?
Next time someone parks there follow them to the car. Ask to see their membership card. Take the number. Ban them.
Send a members email out with education on why disabled apaces are important. Why these places mean so much to us. How much abusing the spaces hurts us. And telling members banning will ensue. Dont just leaflet the bad cars, tell everyone. Run a positive campaign integrating disabled members. Get paralympians in to visit the childrens clubs and talk.
If that doesnt work put nerve gas in the boxercise dummies.
I made a classic mistake a week or two ago. I walked down a corridor.
Now I know what you are thinking...reckless fool how can he be let out alone? Needless to say the corridor exacted it's righteous vengeance by causing my right leg, previously known as Mr. Good Leg, to not work. For those of you with the good fortune never to have experienced a sublux just imagine that your leg suddenly has no strength in it. You topple over..grab the wall...swear...
Of course then the trouble starts. The sublux may or may not reduce on its own(this one i think has not) but it will have caused damage to the tissue around the joint. So your hip stops being a hip and becomes a toothache.
This means any walk beyond about 50m is impossibly painfull. So Davros the wheelchair comes back out.
For anyone who has not spent time in a wheelchair I urge you to do it one day. Round a town centre. Normal day. Not only does it make everything soooo much harder it also gives people a licence to treat you like a vegetable, patronise you rigid or indeed just deny you service. Places such as David Lloyd Ipswich, about whom I shall be blogging anon. There is no experience like it for making you feel like crap.
Now of course Mr Hip being out of whack makes Mr Knee hurt which makes Captain Back hurt etc etc. In fact hip pain doesnt always feel like hip pain. To me it often feels like someone is squeezing my testicle.
So then theres one whole side of your body you can't sleep on. And that means the other side gets slept on too much. And hurts.
There has been a good deal of Davros recently and no end in sight. Dalekery abounds.
As I mentioned tother day I am a bit depressed. On Wednesday for one reason or another I was alone. I spent it on the sofa. All I could do was think of lots of ways of killing myself. Knives. Electricity. Chemicals. Crashing the car. Hanging. I could work out ways of doing it neatly. Ways to contain the perimortem incontinence. Methods to ensure wife or child did not find me because they dont need that.
But oddly not one method worked on a sofa.
So I stayed there.
So the evidence...I get around on wheels. I struggle with stairs. And sofas offer protection from my weaponry.
I am becoming a Dalek.
I am seldom at a loss for words. But just now I am struggling even with actions. I have no clear path in front of me and no solid ground beneath me. Everything I can think of is turned up to shit.
I can barely walk. My good hip spontaneously subluxed last week leaving me unable to do normal things. I get about 10 percent of the way round sainsburys before the pain is crippling. Both my shoulders are bad so i can barely hold a guitar. I have pains in my thumbs and feet that suggest more joint issues. Such is life.
It is hard for me to know how much is real pain and how much is in my head. Its well known pain depends on mood. My mood is so black that i want to take all the things that Mick Jagger painted black in that song and paint them blacker. I did the nhs online depression test and maxed it out.
At xmas I managed to offend my brother. Things are not good at home. Things are not good at work. I am in the shit on every front.
I can blame eds. I can blame drugs. I can blame lots of things.
But I cant see a way out.
I am in the habit of conjugating profanity. This comes from a beloved uncle who once referred to a wheel nut as a " pissy arsedbastard fuckrot". One of my most common expressions of mild vexation is arsebiscuits.
Foal, a literal soul, has demanded to know what one is. So here we are, our recipe for arsebuscuits.
350g plain flour
100g dark brown sugar
75g granulated sugar
100g butter
3tsp ground ginger
1tsp baking powder
4tbs golden syrup
2 eggs
A few chocolate chips
Oven to 180 C
Combine the dry ingredients. Rub in the butter to form a crumby mixture. Add the syrup, and then stir in the eggs one at a time to make a stiff dough.
Rest in fridge for at least 15 mins.
Take teaspoon sized lumps androll into balls. Butter and flour a baking sheet. Put two balls next to each otherto form bumcheeks. Put a chocolate chip centrally to form the nether eye. Bake for about 15 mins till golden. Wait 4 mins to firm up before transfer to a cooling rack.
You can decorate with faux trousers.
