What It Takes



 WHAT IT TAKES

This getting older….
I could barely walk after cycling yesterday, my right leg seemed to be in permanent cramp all day. It made for an uncomfortable night.
However it’s okay, I think so anyway, this morning.
Thank God. For the impact upon us, me not able to easily do what I normally do, was quite devastating. We tread a very fine line here.
Little do people know what it takes.
Sometimes I watch those videos that urban climbers post on YouTube of themselves scaling up the side of skyscrapers, hanging only by their fingers and toes, hundreds of feet high, on flimsy looking window frames.
It’s even worse when they release one hand to make a phone call, or remove a shirt.
There’s a polish climber, Marcin Banot, who talks you through his process as he climbs for charity, in particular, the courage, the focus, the discipline and the terrific attention to breathing required.
Well, my hopes of ever doing that are far behind me now, as yesterday shows. In any case, Linda would be horrified. However it strikes me how perfect is the analogy.
Perilously hanging, without support, over a vast drop, is exactly the terrifying situation we are in, living in the context of severe, little understood illness. The danger of falling is ever present and massive. There is no rest, no relent ever. The pressure is intense. The courage and the effort to hold on, particularly for Linda, is way beyond comprehension, no one could possibly imagine just what it takes for her to cope, every moment of every day and still keep any shred of herself going.
Without discipline, without constant focus, without an immensely strong set of values, we would fall off the precipice into an unending pit of despair, hopelessness and unimaginable pain.
We totally rely on each other to stay safe. As I wrote here yesterday, you must keep looking up.
For that is where hope and new possibility lie.
Without unbelievable courage, especially on Linda’s part, we would freeze and not keep trying to climb, inch by tortuous inch, ever higher above the suffering. And we have climbed very high indeed this last three decades.
Courage is so desperately needed in the world right now. Both of us are immensely humbled by and this morning salute the courage of Alexei Navalny. May he inspire us all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When I am 64 and other false positives : The PACE Trial.

Image
Greg Crowhurst 6 th February 2013 “Much of what we think we know based on conventional statistical studies published in the academic literature stands a good chance of just not being  so “  Roger Pielke Jr http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/false-positive-science.html Imagine  I am a psychiatrist and for £5 million, say ,  I want to prove that CBT and GET are a safe and useful treatment  for ME. The good news is “ how unacceptably easy it is to accumulate (and report) statistically significant evidence for a false hypothesis ,  according to Nelson and  Simonsohn (2011).  Their frightening  paper “ False-Positive Psychology, ” shows  how  “ undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant ,” .  In fact Nelson and Simonshon statistically  “prove” that listening to “ When I am 64 ” by the Beatles can   make you a couple of years young...
Read more

Paralysis, a qualitative study of people with Severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

Image
Greg and Linda Crowhurst (August 8 th 2013). Synopsis Paralysis is a symptom that is rarely highlighted in the literature for ME, yet is found amongst the most severely ill ME population and even some of those not so severely affected. My wife has experienced it for almost 2 decades, without adequate exploration, alongside exposure to denial and dismissal, ignorance and neglect as well as harmful treatment. We wanted to find out if there was anyone else with a similar experience to my wife's or if she was a rare and very severe case. We wanted to highlight the seriousness of this symptom and ask why it is being ignored and down played not only by the medical profession, with its inappropriate focus on fatigue and the psychosocial response, but also by the main charities, none of whom, flag it up as a main symptom. This qualitative research study indicates that there are significant others experiencing apparently similar paralysis and that my wife is not un...
Read more

DO NO HARM, DO NO BETRAYAL

Image
By Diane  I'm not sure where to start but this is my story so far.  My name is Diane and I'm a carer for my adult daughter, Lili, who is completely bedbound with very severe myalgic enceplalomyelitis.  For Lili, M.E. didn't come slowly.   It very rudely crashed into her life and very quickly stole her health, taking bigger and bigger chunks of it as she deteriorated.  It all began when she experienced a gastric-flu virus of a sort she had never experienced before because this time she never regained her health.  A couple days later, she woke up with agonising head pain 'like her brain was on fire', with severe neck pain – she also couldn't move her neck, and her whole body was paralysed.  She's not sure how long she stayed like this as she was in and out of consciousness but she truly felt that she was going to die because her body was undergoing an extreme crisis.  To cut a long story short, it took a year to get a diagnosis durin...
Read more