Adventures of Pom

 Last year I spent some time making a video for  Ataxia UK  detailing most of the manky things I have to do everyday and how I cope with my disability.  Watch it here:  It Works For Me I have no intention of becoming a vlogger (I am certainly no where near as good as Joe Tracini !), the effort was a lot even though I did enjoy it. Through the praise and thank yous' I received through honestly portraying my daily life I learnt that your own actions, however small, can have unexpected side effects. Good ones. Always be kind. Pass on the positive. A mention in a blog by one of the strongest men I have met: Not Ashamed Anymore by Richard C Brown MBE

Even after shielding for almost a year from a potentially deadly virus that is threatening mankind, I was unsure whether I wanted to be injected with, what is hopefully, a vaccine. The world is in the grip of a viral pandemic, covid-19, and I am considered clinically extremely vulnerable because catching it would likely make me more ill than most people. Life threateningly so. Fear is my new normal. I have a few disabilities that affect my immune system and physical functions. I also have stage two heart failure. My reluctance to have the vaccine was due to my own reluctance to have foreign things injected into my body and of the alternative media coverage coupled with my own distrust of the Government. When I received the text from my local surgery asking me to book in for the vaccination I was literally in two minds about whether to do so. After much thought I decided to trust my primary instinct and have the vaccine, with the idea that maybe in the future, at some point, I...

2020 has been very difficult for everybody in many different ways. Unfortunately 2021 will not get a lot better for quite a long time so it is safe to say that despite the new year, the hard times are not over yet. How can you cope?  I wish there was an answer. Perhaps if I share my coping mechanism it might help you. Early last year, before all the Corona stuff happened, I read a book by Matt Haig called Reasons to Stay Alive and this tells his story about learning to to live again following his mental breakdown. He tries to focus on and remember to be thankful for what he has in his life, not on the bad stuff. At the end of The Hunger Games Katniss tells her young infant how she copes with the Post Traumatic Stress caused by competing, by saying that she lists everything she is thankful for. She describes this as 'getting a little bit tedious when you do it all the time but there are worst games to play'. I think that is how we all continue forward from this point, by ...

The first lockdown was particularly difficult for me to get my head around but I managed to find different things that helped me slowly move forward. As a result I now have/use a few different activities, online shops and services that ordinarily I would not have tried. One thing that really helped me is the activity group provided every Friday by Ataxia UK. It gave me purpose every week by watching the film or reading the book that they were going to discuss and it allowed me to meet new people, even if it is not in person. Volunteers and the service that they provide may be small but it is invaluable tome and I cannot praise them enough. When I was approached by a member of their team who explained that they were still going to have an Ataxia UK conference this year but entirely virtually using zoom and would I be involved, I was happy. Having a virtual conference meant that I could attend. They asked me if I would produce a video for them to show at the conference of how I cope with...

The people close to me will probably know that I have not coped with some of the recent changes to society in the best way. I am not doing too badly now but in March my life completely changed. It was as if my four wheels completely fell off and everything stopped. For the benefit of anybody on the planet that does not know what is going on, that was when Covid-19 was declared a worldwide pandemic and the UK joined many other countries around the world in lockdown. Disabled people such as myself, are considered highly vulnerable and have been given stricter measures to shield and isolate. This is not necessarily because we are at higher risk of getting the deadly disease unless our immune system is compromised; it is because if we do contract it, we are more likely to become seriously ill and die. I do not know anybody who is ill with covid-19 and I do wonder if the statistics have been exaggerated slightly to fulfil a larger government agenda but that is a subject for another arti...

As you might know from my previous blogs that one of the issues that I struggle with the most is purpose. Life is gift and although the tree of life hit me repeatedly with the manky stick, I adamantly refuse to believe that my life is purposeless and that I cannot contribute positively to my families lives, my friends lives and to society (despite what ATOS and various politicians ridiculously claim to know). I try to be a good person and I try to contribute to society by doing voluntary work and promoting knowledge sharing and awareness online through my blog.   However… I REALLY enjoy setting myself challenge and tasks and aiming to successfully complete them.   They are challenges that probably seem pretty pointless to anyone other than myself but they give me a larger sense of connection and purpose.   Purpose is important. My previous self-created challenges include The Hanx Challenge which I completed in style by meeting Tom Hanks himself!  ...