Monday 30 May 2022

Lily Rice - Commonwealth Games

There was some exciting news the other day. Many with HSP will know of Lily Rice, who has been amazing people with her wheelchair back-flips and her medals in WCMX.

Lily is competing for Wales in the Commonwealth Games in the summer, in the swimming.

Regular readers will have spotted that I looked for athletes with HSP for the summer and winter Olympics, and Lily becomes the first athlete for my Commonwealth Games list!

You can see more info here:

https://www.swimwales.org/cy/news/fantastic-four-para-swimmers-selected-for-commonwealth-games

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/wales/61601015

https://www.instagram.com/p/CeEM-gxIGuc/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/wales/61602780

Good luck Lily!!!!!



Wednesday 25 May 2022

Accepting the future

There's quite a bit going on in my life at the moment, with me needing to think about moving house in the not too distant future. This is quite an interesting topic and its making me realise that I have to take my future mobility into account in that decision making process.

Regular readers will know that my legs are a bit stiff, that I get through shoes at a reasonable rate, and that I'm needing to use the bannister to go up and down stairs. Running is something that I cannot do for more than a few paces, and I'm starting to need to help myself up when standing up. I consider that whilst my HSP affects me, it does not do so significantly at this time.

I know that I'm going to end up needing to use a wheelchair in the future, and I've known this for quite a long time. However, I've always put this sufficiently far forward in the future that it hasn't needed to influence decisions I've made. In recent months I've felt like this future isn't really so far in the future, and perhaps I ought to be thinking about that future in a more practical way.

I'm not one for moving house regularly, so I would expect that whichever house I end up living in is likely to need to be able to deal with me using walking sticks and potentially either a walking frame and/or a wheelchair depending on what I need and what I find most useful. I know that stairs are going to become progressively more difficult, so I know that this will have to be a factor in any decision. Equally, I am likely to need to change my bike for another mode of transport, that may be an electric trike of some kind, or a mobility scooter, and I'm going to need space to be able to store this and transfer on/off.

So, I like to plan and I like to know whats coming up. I am hopeful that my daily stretches keep my mobility with me for as long as possible, but I also know that change lies ahead. The uncertainty on my progression is not so good for my mental health. I worry that I might be worrying too much, my progression will stay slowly progressing and am building unnecessary factors into this house moving thought process. Whilst at the same time I worry that my HSP will progress faster than it is at the moment, and I'll move into a house that is suboptimal for me in a only few years time.

There are, of course, a load of other non-HSP factors that I need to take into account - children, working from home, energy efficiency, proximity to school, budget and so on. Readers should not be surprised to know that I've got a spreadsheet to track all this......