I can tell you this, it was the worst thing ever. One minute I’m whole and healthy and the next I’m draped over the pavement with a spine in two bits and no movement in my lower half. RTA they call it, huh, more like EOL, or end of life as it was.
Long story short, it could have been much worse – my top half works pretty well, but nothing from the waist down. It’s stunning what medics can do to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Family rallied round and helped where the wheelchair couldn’t go. I moved in with my parents (for a while) so they could share the work of looking after me. Carers cared, and a PA arranges things that need arranging: meals fetched, clothes washed, library books changed, shoes laced, soft voices, no rows (I miss the rows).
Independence is important to me (to everyone) but the new terms and conditions seem to have made me into a Disabled Person, a Dependent. People can assume that your capacity to think and to plan your life is as badly impaired as the useless legs and feet dangling at the end of your body. I may have to run away from home and join a community of radical but impaired people who don’t treat one another as Disabled.
Just to give an illustration of why this flight might become necessary, I offer the experience of the surprise party. Does anyone like surprise parties? It is possible that a small minority might relish the pantomime of showing the surprise and joy and gratitude which these events demand. I just don’t know any of them.
It wasn’t hard to eavesdrop on the plans. ‘Lift his spirits’, ‘I’ll do the food’, ‘when he gets back from his outing with the PA we can jump out and surprise him’, ‘he’ll love it’. Having pieced the pending horror together, I asked the PA to roll me an extra big joint but she said it was above her pay grade. So the ordeal was to be unmitigated by pharmacological support. Or possibly not…
I had a number of radical-but-impaired friends who were up for a party. They suggested that it could be a moment of self-actualization (self-actualization??). We could make the point that ‘it is society that disables’. Yes, yes but how would disability right slogans go down with the assorted family and carers? Still, give it a go to break the impasse at home (which, to be honest, must be exhausting for all concerned).
On the party day, my mates turned up with various musical instruments and a vuvuzela. We met outside the house and rolled, hopped and skipped inside.
‘Surprise,’ we all shouted. And we were, each in our different ways . Before any confrontation got going we settled down and played music, ate the party food and passed round the PA’s huge spliff.
After g and t s and cheese straws had been imbibed, it was time to talk. Really talk.
