Living with... Cerebral Palsy.
I want to start by saying that I am struggling a
little with the “Living with...” title. Living with, implies there was a
time when I lived without it or it is an addition to one’s life.
However, I have had Cerebral Palsy (CP) from birth therefore I have
never known a time when I did not have it and it is very much woven into
who I am. For me it is like saying, living with having a head on your
shoulders. To think otherwise seems ridiculous and beyond imagination.
It is like that when I think of having CP, to imagine life without it or
to put it in a neat little compartment of my life seems ridiculous to me
and outside of my imagination.
Writing this article is not easy because having CP
is a whole life experience and without writing my whole
autobiography I can only give snap shots of different times in my
life. I guess the best place to begin is to tell you a bit about
myself and my disability. I am a single man living in Nottingham, I
am in my early forties, I live independently in my own home with
support from Personal Assistants (PA), and I am on the management
boards of a number of disability organisations in a voluntary
capacity.
My CP was caused by a lack of oxygen during
complications at birth that resulted in brain damage. This damage
basically messes up the communication between the brain and the
muscles in my body. For example say that my brain tells my hand to
make a certain movement, but the muscles receive scrambled control
messages, which means my hand movements are jerky or I may even make
a totally different movement to what I intended. CP is as unique as
people are themselves in that it never has the identical effect on
one person to the next. Its severity is also infinitely variable
from the mild to very severe. The physical effects of CP for me are
that I have poor coordination of all my limbs, I am unable to walk,
I have difficulty in sitting up straight, and I have a significant
speech impairment. So I depend on a powered wheelchair for my
mobility and my computer is a great aid to communication.
For me I would say that the most difficult aspect
of having CP is my speech impairment. It is the route of most of my
frustrations in one way or another. Society’s expectation is that
everyone is able to express themselves eloquently and efficiently
through speech. Most people who come across someone like myself,
with a significant speech impairment, they simply do not know how to
deal with the situation. I think this leads some people to avoid
entering into conversation with me in order to avoid their own fears
about entering into an unfamiliar situation and the embarrassment
they perceive it might cause.
My speech is understood by those people who know
me, although some people are better at understanding me than others.
I have a theory on this; I do not believe it is about their ability
to listen, but rather their ability to interpret and used the
context to workout the bits they do not understand.
I do get frustrated at times when people do not engage their
brain when trying to understand me. Just the other day I was in the
kitchen trying to tell my PA what I wanted to eat, and she repeated
back to me that she thought I was saying, “I wanted her to put the
cat out”. I do not even own a flaming cat, and even if I did, what
has a cat got to do with wanting something to eat? An extreme
example, but it is true and it infuriates me because it defies
logical thinking. Most
of the time, when people do not understand me, I am happy to repeat
myself or to think of another way of saying the same thing until I
am understood. Even when people pretend to understand me, I can
usually tell by the split second pause while they try to decide
whether to say that they have not understood, before nodding in
agreement. The best policy if you do not understand someone with a
speech impairment is to ask them to repeat themselves, and keep
asking until you understand them.
The point that I wanted to get to is that my
speech impairment makes it very difficult for me whenever meeting
people for the first time. Not only because of any preconceptions
they may have, but because they simply will not be used to my speech
and therefore are very likely to have a harder time understanding me
than people who already know me. Put this into the context of a
social setting where you might expect to meet new people, a pub, a
party, or at church, you have lots of people talking and possibly
music playing, which creates loads of background noise. My speech,
background noise, and talking to someone new; I would say that the
likelihood of me being understood is precisely zero.
In these situations it is like you feel trapped in your own
body.
There is the whole self confidence thing, after
years of experiences of not being understood by people, when the
opportunity does arise to talk to someone that you might be
interested in talking with, you believe that they are not going to
understand your speech, so you just clam up and say as little as
possible. Therefore, because you believe this encounter will not
workout, you do not try in any real way to engage with them, and
guess what; the encounter does not work out. I believe this is known
as a self fulfilling prophecy. I believe I am an intelligent and
interesting person, and if I did not have a speech impairment then I
would have much more self-confidence and be much more out spoken.
I believe being in a wheelchair poses yet another
set of difficulties when it comes to the social setting. If people
are standing at a bar for example talking, you are at a different
height to them sitting down. In a wheelchair you need more space, so
you can not always position yourself were you might like without
causing an obstruction to other people, and you can not mingle in a
crowded room without people having to clear a path for you. And on
top of all this you have got all the usual accessibility issues and
limitations attributed to using a wheelchair.
There is a common belief that CP is a static and
non-progressive condition. While I agree if you only consider the
route cause of CP, the brain damage once occurred it does not
progress any further or get worse over time. However, I believe has
a whole CP puts unnatural stresses and strains on muscles and
joints, which speeds up the ageing process of the body. This is
something that I was blissfully unaware of in my youth and something
no one ever warned me about. I naively believed CP was
non-progressive until my body told me otherwise.
From my early teens I had the goal in mind that I
wanted to be in paid employment when I reached adulthood. I suppose
I needed to prove to myself and others that I was as capable as any
able-bodied person of succeeding in employment and playing my part
in society. For someone with my level of disability this was an
ambitious goal and some would have said an unrealistic one. However
having set myself this goal early on in life it gave me the
motivation to work hard in my education. This meant I was always
thinking one step ahead, just as many disabled people have to do in
order to progress in life. Computers were the big new technology
developing throughout my teenage years and it seemed that they could
be the key to me getting into employment. Also I seemed to have a
natural gift with computers. I remember when I was about twelve
years old I used to take home the school computer manual and I
taught myself to write basic computer programs much to the surprise
of my teachers, some of which had no understanding of computers what
so ever. To cut a long story short, I got five GCSEs before leaving
school and I then went on to a further education college where I got
another two O Levels and two A Levels. English was never my strong
point and I recall my lecturer telling me that I would never pass my
O Level in English and she was seriously expecting me to give up on
the subject. Now I do not know how others would react to being told
they would never be able to do something, but I decided to take it
as a challenge and I was determined to prove her wrong. So with the
aid of a spell checker program for my computer provided by the
technology support service within the college, I got a grade B in my
O Level English. And I took great delight and satisfaction from
proving my lecturer completely wrong.
I have great determination when I really put my mind to
something.
Next I went to Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham
Trent University) where I got a Higher National Diploma (HND) in
Computer Science. My HND was very strategic in getting me into
employment as it was a three years sandwich course, so the second
year was a work experience placement. My placement was in the
Computing Department of a local government council. I guess this
worked well for both them and myself as neither of us really knew
how I would cope with full-time employment, and on their part it was
a fairly low risk commitment if it all went pear-shaped. I will
always be very grateful to the people who gave me this opportunity
and to the people who enabled me to fit into the section where I
worked. It was a successful placement and my work involved designing
and creating databases, and evaluating software packages before they
were used throughout the council. In my final year of my HND I had
to do a practical project and I ended up doing this within the same
department for one day a week. This again was a strategic move as it
meant they could not forget about me, and I could keep up with any
developments within the department or on the job front.
Once I completed my HND obviously I wanted a job.
At that time the council were running a positive discrimination
scheme for disabled people. They had central funding available to
create positions to employ people with disabilities in order to
improve their equal opportunities figures for employing disabled
people. My department wanted to take me on permanently and under
this scheme they were able to create a new position for me and they
did not have to pay me from the departmental budget for the first
year. So the deal was done and I was now in full-time employment
with a permanent contract.
On the whole I enjoyed my work and my colleagues
made it a pleasant atmosphere to work in. In some ways I found work
very challenging. I remember quite early on in my time at the
council I had to go with a colleague to a meeting in one of the
committee rooms where there were half a dozen people who wanted to
discuss some project that I was going to be doing some work on. Now
you need to know that growing up with CP has meant I have had a
pretty sheltered life and I was frankly quite terrified about being
in this situation. The idea of being in a big room full of important
people and having to answer their questions filled me with fear.
What if I did not know the answers to their questions, or if my mind
went blank, or they could not understand my speech? I did not have a
clue how I was going to get through this ordeal. I do not think I
would have felt any worse if I was going before the chief executive
board of the council. I could not tell my colleague how I was
feeling and it would not have been professional. My biggest fear was
the embarrassment if I made a fool of myself.
This part is difficult for me to write because I
am frightened that I am giving away my personal secrets, but here
goes. People with CP can experience involuntary bodily responses to
stressful or emotional situations, which can be seen in the
exacerbation of spasticity or speech difficulties. Basically,
because you become aware of the situation, then your body becomes
more uncontrollable at the exact moment you want to appear cool,
calm, and collected. So in the context of a stressful situation this
can make interaction more difficult as your bodily control worsens.
This makes life hard because it is a vicious circle, you become
aware that you need to be calm, that is in itself stressful, and
stress makes your bodily control worse, so you get more stressed
about it, then your bodily control gets even worse, and on it goes.
It is like your own body is betraying the secrets of your inner
emotions. The only comfort I have is that most people are not aware
enough to make the connections, but after reading this they may now
be able to!
I did survive that first meeting thanks to my
colleague who did a good job of covering for any lack of experience
or confidence on my part. I did eventually get comfortable with this
type of situation after some practice. I worked in the same section
for fourteen years and worked my way up through the grades including
being promoted three times. I eventually became a Senior PC Analyst.
One of my greatest achievements was largely being responsible for
designing and implementing the Customer Request Tracking database
for Desktop Services. This required me to produce computer programs
consisting of 18,000 lines of code. This was a high profile system
handling approximately three million pounds worth of orders annually
and I was responsible for administrating and maintaining this
system. I got a great sense of satisfaction when this system was
live and running.
Unfortunately after pushing my body hard for
nearly fourteen years to work in a full-time job, things started to
go wrong. I started my permanent job when I was just twenty five
years old and now I was in my late thirties. The first event that
changed things significantly started off fairly mundanely. I got
back ache. I did not think much about it because I often get back
ache from time to time. It started at the beginning of the week with
it getting more noticeable each day.
One morning I was in bed and I thought I heard
someone at the front door, so I got out of bed and I crawled to the
front door as quick as I could. I used to spend much of my time at
home crawling around and sitting on the floor, it gave me a sense of
freedom from the wheelchair. Anyway when I got to the door there was
no one there and at this point I realised that my back was very
painful to move. I managed to slowly get back to bed.
My PA came in a couple of hours later. They
normally went into the kitchen to start my breakfast while I got up
and got dressed. I managed to get out of bed on to the floor, got to
the bedroom door and found I was unable to stretch up to reach the
door handle to open the door because the pain was too great.
Something I normally just do without a second thought. I tried three
times, each time the pain just got worse, until I just could not
move at all. I was in agony. I had to shout to my PA to come in to
my bedroom. I just told her that my back had gone and I could not
move. She asked if she should call an ambulance. As this had never
happened to me before and I could not think of a better idea, I
agreed.
When the ambulance came the paramedics gave me gas
and air to get me off the floor. The paramedics thought I had maybe
pulled a muscle or trapped a nerve. At the hospital the doctor did
not make any diagnosis really, just gave me pain killers,
anti-inflammitories, and muscle relaxants. All I know is that the
pain was incredible and I could not tolerate to move at all. Later
my GP just said that I was getting older and it was my CP taking its
toll on my body generally. Just the kind of news that you really
want to hear when you feel pretty low and you are in pain.
It took about ten days before there was any
improvement in the amount of pain I had when I tried to move. I was
off work for three weeks sick then I had three weeks holiday. I was
taking pain killers for most of this time. The only time that I was
pain free was at night, lying still in bed. It took a good couple of
months to get this to improve.
This had put a blot on my sickness record at work
and had raised questions about my health generally. I do not think
that I really recovered from this during my remaining time at work.
I was aware that I was getting more and more tired and feeling
generally unwell. I seemed to be catching every sickness bug, virus,
or cold going. I was frequently taking days off work sick as I
simply felt too awful to drag myself out of bed in the morning, and
I knew I was going to get into serious trouble with my managers. I
eventually reached the point where I could no longer physically or
mentally cope with my job. I could not get any concentration or
motivation to do my work. I did not know what was going on, but the
physical effects of work were very real. I had not been happy in my
job for a while as it had become increasingly more exhausting and
equally less enjoyable or rewarding.
One day I went to work feeling dreadful and after
going to the toilet to throw up, I made a very conscious decision
that I could not go on like this any longer. I remember thinking to
myself that day that I would never go back to that workplace again.
This was a very irrational thought as I had no idea how things would
work out, however I never did set foot in that place again. I just
could not do it anymore, and this realisation came to me as quite a
shock.
I went to my GP and was immediately signed off
work for three months having been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue.
Due to my CP I am always making jerky or involuntary movements and
this means that, compared to an able-bodied person, I burn up a lot
more energy when undertaking any task. This is why tiredness and
fatigue can be a real issue for people with CP. Once I stopped
working it was like my whole body went in to meltdown. It’s like you
do not realise how hard you have been pushing yourself until you
stop; it’s like opening the flood gates. I was physically and
mentally absolutely exhausted. I had no energy to do anything or to
concentrate on anything. After being signed off work for twelve
months and after much consideration I decided that the right course
of action was to leave work on ill health grounds. I realised that
my health was more important than money, and that you can only push
yourself so hard for so long before it all catches up with you.
Incidentally, I did have to write my own medical report on the
affects of ageing and CP as my GP and the Occupational Health had
not got a clue. The result was that I was retired from work on ill
health grounds. I have to say that I think it was quite an
achievement to be retired at the age of thirty eight!
I have recovered somewhat compared to how I was
back then, however on many days my greatest achievement is getting
out of bed in the morning. I still get fairly tired as I probably
still do more than I should and most of the time I have some part of
my body aching or giving me some pain. I believe that this is all
part of the cause with my CP and all I can do is carry-on
regardless. The alternative is to do very little, which is just not
me, and would result in a life not worth living at all.
Growing up with a significant disability has a
great impact on life. I went to the same “special” day school in
Birmingham from the age of five until I was nineteen. Going to a
school exclusively for children with special needs created an
environment where it was “normal“ to be disabled, so that you do not
see it as an issue or anything out of the ordinary. This was
certainly the case in the early years and even later you were in an
environment where you were protected from the real world. This may
be good at the time, but when you eventually emerge into the big
wide world and you have grown up around people who either were
disabled themselves or were very comfortable around disabled people,
to suddenly find yourself surrounded by people who have very little
understanding of disability or even have prejudice against disabled
people is a huge shock. I feel that this made it harder to deal with
having CP when I reached adulthood as I was not well prepared for
the real world.
I really want to say something about the physio-terrorists
(I meant physiotherapist) at my school. I do not know if I was just
unlucky with the physiotherapist who I was assigned to, but I truly
believe that she did more harm to me than she helped me. Her mission
was to make me walk. While I do not have a problem with this as a
goal, looking back I feel that she crossed a line in pursuit of the
goal. I think that she dismissed the fact that she was working with
a five, six, or seven year old child. She made me do things that
were physically very hard or that even hurt and things that
frightened me. She would do things like hold out a bar in front of
her with both her hands and I would have to hold onto the bar with
my hands and walk forward as she walked backwards. I hated this
because the bar was moving all the time and made it very difficult
to coordinate my limbs and I was clinging on for dear life because
if I lost my grip I was likely to go straight down on to the hard
floor which was definitely going to hurt. This kind of cruel game
seemed to happen everyday for quite some period of time. In reality
I can not remember how often it happened or how long it went on for,
but I know that it made me feel deeply unhappy for some time. I also
remember during this time that my dad would quite often bring home a
Matchbox toy car to cheer me up and as a reward for working hard
with the physiotherapist. My parents must have known that I was
having a hard time of it, but I am sure that they would have trusted
that the physiotherapist knew what she was doing. I think that my
parents had the best approach towards my disability, they just ask
me to do the best that I could. They always encouraged me to try and
do things without putting me down if I really could not do
something, as long as I tried my best that was okay.
I had this physiotherapist for five or six years.
She gave up trying to get me walking and I remember feeling relieved
that I could get on with the school work that I actually quite
enjoyed. The cruel joke was about a year or so later the
physiotherapist decided to have another go at getting me walking.
This would involve instruments of torture commonly known as a
walking frame and leg splints. I was probably around ten years old
by now. The problem with the walking frame was that I was always
banging myself on it and I have always been fairly slim so bones
against metal would generally hurt. Worst still was the fact that
regularly I would topple over in the walking frame and my full body
weight would go down on top of the metal bars of the frame, ouch
that really hurt. The leg splints were worn to keep my ankles
straight as I did not have the muscle strength or coordination to do
this myself. These
splints were moulded to the shape of my feet and were supposed to be
comfortable to wear, but they never were. In fact eventually I
developed sores and calluses to such an extent that my mum asked the
school nurse to take a look. The nurse was appalled at the state of
my feet and apparently gave the physiotherapist a right bollocking
for allowing my feet to get into such a state. Once more I was
allowed to stop walking.
I was now eleven and I was told by the
physiotherapist that I would be seeing the consultant, who visited
the school periodically, to see about getting some new splints and
getting me walking again. Well I was filled with a mixture of dread,
sadness, and anger. I had had enough, it was too much pain,
physically and emotionally, I could not walk far with these aids,
even on a perfectly smooth floor I fell over regularly, I could
never walk outside in the real world so what was the point, and all
this physiotherapy treatment was taking me out of class, which meant
I was missing out educationally.
I went home that afternoon and poured out all this
to my mum. Mum understood what I had been through and my reasons for
wanting to end this physiotherapist endless pursuit to make me walk.
Mum suggested that I write a letter to the physiotherapist and the
consultant explaining how I felt and that I did not want to continue
trying to walk. This was what I did and they basically took this on
board and agreed to let me be a full time wheelchair user. Word
spread through the school staff about what I had done and I received
a lot of praise and respect from many of the staff, I guess that it
was fairly unusual for an eleven year old child with “special needs”
to take control over their own treatment and ultimately control over
their own life.
The point that I really wanted to make is that the
treatment of this physiotherapist has had a traumatic effect on my
life. As an adult there has been occasions when “professionals” have
questioned some aspect of my disability and have said that I should
be able to do more for myself. In these situations I found that I
would instantly get a sickening nervous feeling in the pit of my
stomach and I would get very defensive. This automatic reaction was
totally out of my control. It happened a few times before I worked
out why I was feeling this way. It was how I felt as a five, six, or
seven year old boy with an overpowering physiotherapist forcing me
to overcome some aspect of my CP. I believe that this has left
emotional scars that can be triggered even today given the right
situation. I know physiotherapists have a job to do, but when
treating young children they must remember that above all the child
needs to feel loved, safe and cared for, otherwise they may fix the
physical condition, but in the process cause untold psychological
and emotional damage.
As you can see having CP is a life long journey
and there is so much that I could say, but I can only give you a
glimpse into a life with CP. One life changing time was the
realisation in my early twenties that if people have a problem with
my disability, then that is their problem and not mine. This was a
very liberating realisation. Another liberating discovery was the
social model of disability, which basically says that it is not the
disability that is the problem, but it is the society or environment
that we live in which is the problem. For example, it is not my CP
that prevents me from entering a building with a dozen steps at the
front entrance, but the fact that there is not a ramp or lift at the
front entrance does prevent me from entering the building. This is
opposed to the medical model of disability, which basically says
that it is the medical condition (in my case CP) that is the problem
to be fixed.
All my life I have had to cope with people’s
ignorance regarding my disability. People often stare at me and I
can become the centre of attention for children as they notice that
I am different. I have travelled abroad and this problem seems to
multiply ten fold in other countries. When I was in Turkey and
Greece for example it was obvious that they were not use to seeing
disabled people in wheelchairs out and about. In fact I do not think
they would have paid more attention to me if I had two heads. Other
cultures also associate a wheelchair and my level of disability with
being poor and helpless. I have a drink holder fitted to my
wheelchair and when I have been abroad people would often drop money
into it has they walk by me. Believe it or not, this has happened on
very rare occasions in the United Kingdom too. I have developed a
fairly thick skin over the years and now quite often I do not notice
people looking and staring unless it is blatantly obvious. I think
that the people with me are more aware of it than I am.
The other ignorance that I am much less tolerant
of is people’s assumption that if you have poor control over your
body and a speech impairment, then you must be intellectually
subnormal. This ranges from people completely ignoring me, the old
“does he take sugar” scenario, to talking to me like I am a five
year old child. This really infuriates me, and I can encounter this
anywhere and everywhere. Even health care professionals can do this
and you would expect them to know better. I do not know why people
can not treat people with disabilities the same as anyone else.
Another aspect of my CP that affects my daily life
is the fact that I am unable to feed myself. Even being fed by
someone, I am a slow eater. It takes a lot of coordination to chew
and swallow food without dropping it or choking on it and
coordination is definitely not my strong point. As for talking and
eating at the same time, experience has taught me that this normally
ends in a messy disaster, so I do not try this anymore. People who
know me well also know that it is not advisable to make me laugh
while I have a mouth full of food otherwise they may well end up
wearing it!
I was made to feed myself at school for a while.
This made the tricky process of eating into something fairly
tortuous. Chasing food around the plate, food going all over the
table and me, stabbing myself in the mouth, and occasionally getting
some food actually in to my mouth; oh what a great way to enjoy your
meal, I think not! Also there were certain foods which were
impossible like spaghetti or peas. And the physiotherapist used to
really annoy me by separating things out. For example if the pudding
was sponge cake and custard, I was presented with a bowl of dry
sponge cake that I had to feed myself with, then afterwards a care
assistant was allowed to feed me with a bowl of custard as this was
deemed too messy for me to feed myself with. This totally ruined a
very nice pudding, who wants to eat dry sponge cake followed by a
bowl of what is cold congealed custard by the time I got it. And I
knew damn well that the physiotherapist would be enjoying her own
hot sponge cake and custard that same day and I used to think that
was so unfair. Sometimes the care assistants would take pity on me
and feed me most of my meal, however they would then get into
trouble from the physiotherapist when she found out what they had
done.
For me being fed is
the only way I stand any chance of enjoying my food. Trying to feed
myself just makes the whole process of eating too difficult and
unbearable. It does not bother me that I have to be fed as it is all
that I have known for most of my life. I guess that it does limit my
independence in that you can not go for more than a few hours
without eating something, however I see this as just another aspect
of having CP. I do not know how people feel about feeding me,
especially in public places, but generally I find once people get to
know me they are happy to help me out in this way, so maybe it is
not such a big deal after all.
I find that my CP can be effected by many things
for instance the weather. I certainly ache more in winter and the
cold can be a real issue. When I get cold my muscles tense up and
become more jerky and harder to coordinate. When I get really cold I
can’t do anything other than shiver uncontrollably. Another thing
with my CP is that the more I try to do something or think about the
movements I want to make or not make, the worse the outcome is. For
example, putting a key in a lock, on very rare occasions I can do it
in one go. This happens when I am doing it subconsciously and
thinking about something totally different from putting the key in
the lock. As soon as I start thinking more about trying to get that
key in the lock, chances are that I will not do it first go, and if
I have not done it by the third attempt then it could take up to six
goes before I get there. Obviously if I try enough times, by the
laws of probability I will get the key in the right place
eventually, but that comes down to sheer determination rather than a
sudden improvement in my coordination.
This may all sound a bit negative and this is
because I have focused on my disability rather than life as a whole.
I would not say that living life with a significant disability is
easy, but neither would I say it is all bad. I believe in making the
most of the opportunities that life presents to me.
I know that this will seem alien to many people,
but I am a committed Christian. I believe in a living God and He has
a purpose for my life, that there is a greater purpose to the trials
of life. This gives me daily strength to know that I am not alone in
whatever situation that I find myself in and that I have a God who
will never leave me. “For I am convinced that neither death nor
life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is
in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is my favourite Bible verse.
I do not see any conflict between being disabled
and being a Christian; in fact I do not know how I managed to cope
without the knowledge of the existence of God before I became a
Christian. You see without God what is the purpose of our existence?
I once heard someone say, "We're born, life is a bummer, and then we
die". If this is the best we can hope for then I think I might throw
myself under a bus and avoid the 'bummer' part of life.
However, with God there is so much more to live
for and so much to look forward to in the future. Once we accept
Jesus as our one and only saviour, we receive so many promises from
God, which appear in the Holy Bible. I have taken a few quotations
from this book to illustrate my beliefs. When life gets difficult I
believe that, "The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold
in times of trouble.” There is a better place prepared for me in
Heaven, "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I
would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you."
and "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more
death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has
passed away." I believe that I live in a fairly messed up world in a
fairly messed up body, but this is not all there is to life. I have
included this because it puts my life and disability in to a much
bigger context. This gives me great comfort and support for the here
and now, and great hope for something much better for the next life
to come.
Written: July 2011.
 © Copyright 2012
Steve Smith
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