HATE CRIME ON THE DISABLED UP 75%

My birthday turned out to be very good. I was totally distracted from the fact of it. I am not at all bothered about getting older. I feel amazed and lucky to have got to 54. No I hate my birthday and Christmas because no matter how hard one tries memories of birthdays and Christmases past are always in the forefront at this time of year.

We had visitors yesterday. The owner of the father of my litter of puppies and her partner. We really enjoy their company. We got to talk about dogs for a short while. We all agreed on which was the best puppy.

 We also had two other couples arrive later in the afternoon to choose their puppies. The three puppies that I am selling are at now all sold and they will go to their new homes later this week.

I think I may be learning how to put the concept of pacing myself into action. I had my swim yesterday morning between 8 AM and 9 AM. I then came home and I bathed the puppies.  Then we had the visitors.  I spent far too much time on my legs. Five minutes is too long. By the evening I was very tired and in a lot of pain. I began to think about my plans to today and it occurred to me that  I ought not have any. I did not go swimming and I have no plans to do anything else. As it is, I am having a lot of difficulty walking today and have enough pain that it comes through even with the morphine.   I think by deciding to have a rest day that I am learning about pacing myself.

I know that I have to face facts but I do find this rather frustrating. I value my freedom very much and I do hate to be limited. But I have learned that by battling my body the way that I have been, I have just made matters worse and I have in fact progressed more quickly because of it. No, if I think about it, my problems are no worse. I think that I am just less able to force myself than I used to be. Part of this change is also to accept help when I need it. To this end, when a friend and shop assistant asked me if I would like them to do my boot laces up after I had tried on a shoe, I answered yes, even if after a little hesitation.

Within myself I feel very much better. It is clear to me now just how stressed out I had become and how this was clearly manifest for at least three months  before I crashed. Because I am feeling so much better my thinking is much more clear. I can see what happened and why. I can also see how I got through the crash very quickly because my previous recovery is indeed real and I used everything that I had learned to work through this much less painfully and more quickly. All that happened is what I have frequently said on this blog: we never fully recover and that the episodes of flashbacks and grief and night terrors and fear become less frequent and less intense. Even though my crash was pretty intense it was  short lived and perhaps would not have been so intense had I recognise the signs earlier. Although to be frank I do not think there is any point ruminating over the fact that I didn't recognise it sooner. It would seem that no matter how aware one is,  these episodes will still happen.

I am becoming increasingly angry with the government and its determination to make disabled people pay for the deficit. They are in the process of reassessing all of us and they are removing disability from many of us also. Their own figures show that only .8% of disability claimants are fraudulent. You would think that people like me with progressive debilitating diseases  would be safe but we are not.  Many such people have lost their disability and their cars also. This really worries me. Without a car fitted out with a crane to lift my wheelchair in and out I would be housebound. I would not even be able to get to my doctor. I have yet to hear anything. That in itself is stressful. 

I am completely astonished and angry that the government are picking on the most vulnerable in society in this time of financial insecurity. They have convinced the general public that not only are we a burden upon them, eating up their taxes, but that most of us are fake as well. Hate crime against the disabled has risen by 75%. I feel even more angry because there was a time when I thought that our Prime Minister  was a more compassionate conservative who understood because he had a disabled child. I now realise that was very foolish indeed. Having a disabled child did not make him any less rich and had his son survived he would never have had to worry about disability benefits because he had multimillionaire parents.  Mr Cameron just does not get it and he most certainly does not care.