You Have Not a Leg to Stand On Read Online Free PDF

and immediately I could sense the immensity of the Indian Ocean. My legs had already been affected by osteoporosis so it wasn’t possible for me to sink. I floated about on my back, stretched my arms up over my head, weightless, I turned over and looked down. I hadn’t got goggles on so everything was very blurry, but I could see the reef wall plunge down out of sight. It was stunningly beautiful, little fish darting in and out of the colourful coral. I’ve always been able to hold my breath for a long time so I just hung there looking down, buffeted about by the small waves on the surface. I felt completely at peace. I wasn’t aware of any pain. My body was absorbing energy. I didn’t want to take a breath. I wanted to be part of this lovely enticing picture. I don’t know how close I was to that moment, that millisecond before the oblivion of the crash. It would be so easy to end this awful struggle we were both yearning to be through. I rolled onto my back and took a deep breath. That experience was a pivotal point in my recovery. In the deep misery we were both suffering, I’d forgotten how much I loved the sea.

Stoke Mandeville
    In retrospect, I began to realise it was while at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, I lost my will to live. By the time I arrived, I’d been six weeks in Nairobi Hospital, four weeks in St. Mary’s Roehampton and one week with Marriott. No one could possibly have known, going to Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the star of stars for paraplegic rehabilitation, would break my spirit for years to come.
    One of the most important things a paraplegic must learn is how to deal with double incontinence. I’ve explained earlier how I was taught to deal with urine collection and how unsatisfactory it was. So this is some sort of explanation for the far greater difficulty of dealing with the bowels. It’s not a subject I really want to dwell on, but if I’m to tell my story at all truthfully, I must explain how awful and how curtailing the lack of bowel control really is. I’ve never seen it explained. Possibly for the same reason I’m reticent to do so now.
    It’s all very different now, but when I went to Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the present hospital was a far-off dream. So on arrival I was put into the dreaded 1X Ward, ruled with a rod of iron by Sister Rose. Sister Rose didn’t put up with wimps, this was the situation, put up with it and deal with it. She was married to a man who could only move his head. And yet every morning he was up and dressed, bright and breezy, in his electric wheelchair, which he controlled with his chin, visiting people who were down in the dumps. Now, in the modern new hospital, the mattresses patients lie on have little motors to blow them up. This moves the air from place to place, making a ripple effect up and down the body, all to prevent the curse of pressure sores. But in those days we were laid out on four sets of two plump pillows, along the length of the bed. Every two hours, two orderlies and one nurse would come to the bed, the two orderlies picked me up flat in their arms while the nurse turned the pillows over and plumped them up. Then they would lay me down again on my opposite side. The whole ward of thirty beds had to have this procedure performed every two hours, night and day.
    Although I was paralysed from the waist down, I couldn’t move my top half at all. I couldn’t sit up, I couldn’t roll over, all I could do was move my arms and my head. This was understood at Stoke but not at Roehampton where dealing with defecation and urination hadn’t even been touched upon. So as soon as the turning procedure was done, along came an orderly with a little tray on wheels, who said, ‘How you feel today, fifty percent?’ I smiled wryly. ‘I’m going to plumb you up.’ I just looked at him, it wasn’t an expression I’d associated with myself. He pulled the sheet down,