I've always felt I might be ahead of the wave and as if any more proof were needed, here is my purple cast which I 'wore' over christmas and New Year.I believe it beautifully brings out the bruises making their way down my toes rather nicely don't you think?

It's been drawn to my attention that Radiant orchid is The Colour of the Year according to pantone

post today is short and to the point. Unlike the six weeks of cast over christmas. 

The following view was joyous!

ok, so my goth party cast and radiant orchid are quite different colours but out of what was on offer at the fracture clinic (red, blue, black, white, yellow, green, orange) I came as close to radiant orchid as possible.

Purple has also been designated as the colour of disability according to the BBC's reporting of the trendsetters and marketeers. Noone's sure but perhaps it relates to disabled US veteran's puple hearts, the colour of royalty, the official colour of  the "Non-partisan UK-based Disability campaign. Advocacy group Broken of Britain. As a group in society we represent enough disposable income to be worth chasing, like the grey and pink pounds, apparently. 

Not sure if we'd all agree with that but I still managed to survive the angle grinder they use to cut through the cast without picking up further disability!

I naively hoped once the cumbersome cast was gone I'd be feeling, in comparison to how i was before the fall so incredibly, gloriously mobile.

How wrong I was but it seems nothing comes to anyone effort free.

Bring on the knitted wheelchair warmers, I say!

The UK MS Society went purple a few years ago from orange; almost a 180degree change on the colour wheel... My mistake, they appear still to be orange but the free cloth shopping bag given out at the event in 2012 is purple. 

I've been doing a number of things with/for them over the past year some of which i think I've blogged about before I would provide the links but it's a Friday evening, I've just had a glass of wine, I'm listening to the Now Show on BBC radio4 and have some photos to process for a business mentor's website. I'll put the link in a later post when my photos are included.

I also need to return a call to a lady in the process of drawing up a study or trial into an MS treatment. I really do need to read up on what they're after

a multitude of high stakes... it would seem

This article highlights some of the vested interests in ms healthcare. All the hot and fetid air that gets blown over people with ms who, you could argue, are the ones with most at stake in finding answers concerning their condition are only interested in keeping themselves as able as possible and yet have to watch grown adults squabble and name call.
I think it goes some way to explaining our (I and my fellow colleagues in disease) years' long righteous ire.
The last paragraph is worth reading I, with a vested interest found it a long article but worth sticking with.


All I can be sure of is what has happened more than once, to me. My (or our?) reporting of our own human experience is, it pains me to admit, sometimes not all that reliable. see Nagel question what it's like to be a bat.
HDensityOT (hyperbaric oxygen therapy) which results in all the tissues of the body being saturated with oxygen makes the slowly deteriorating vision in my right eye (started 12 years ago) a little better whilst breathing at pressure. This would lead me to believe that if I were to take oxygen more regularly I might get more permanent improvements.
A side effect of this saturation is better communication with my bladder and a general lightening of the world. Think of the difference between going out under a leaden, grey, glowering dome and skipping out into a cloudless, clear skied day. Trying to measure that difference has proved pretty tricky but our own wellbeing is one of if not the most important things in our world and is unfortunately sorely overlooked in this sixty year old healthcare system that was developed while we still had rationing... times have changed and chronic conditions now abound. Our health service free at the point of need and envy of the rosy bespectacled world needs to change.
We're living longer but there seems very little debate about the quality of that life. Harold Shipman perhaps took it too far but it could be argued that family GPs up until the entry of the pharmaceutical companies and their desire to grow market share had a handle on their flock and couldn't/wouldn't waste thousands on elderly parishioners when there were handfuls of babies and oyounger members of the comunity that could do with a fair crack o' the whip and perhaps some extra attention.

Whilst the bitch slapping mentioned above goes on for humans, in race horses where there is obvious money to be made or lost this vet article mentions the ill effects on 'sport horses' of jugular vein occlusion. No question of whether the condition exists.

I'm not quite sure where this link came from  (these blog posts don't follow a straight path from conception to completion) but it sort of neatly illustrates how someone with an ill defined incurable condition needs to read lots of stuff and try lots of stuff to find a way through their own predicament. Holistic rules: believe in yourself and question EVERYTHING else and begin to enjoy the process of de-stupidification!
All healthcare professionals have different priorities to us. After all, they can close the door on our condition at the end of the working day.