Tag: empowering

Posted in Archive, October 2020

New Found Independence

Posted on by dystoniaandme

After discovering recently the wait to be assessed in my area for an electric wheelchair was likely to be several months if not more, we decided to explore what other options were out there. My happy accident after days of searching and getting to the point of really feeling like I was just going to have to accept that I was essentially mainly house bound at the moment, I stumbled across National Mobility Hire, which I have until April 2021; hopefully by then I will have had my assessment but that’s about the current wait time. I only wish I had found them sooner. This morning they dropped my electric wheelchair off and it’s as if they gave me the key to life back.

As soon as Damon had got home from work we set off out with the kids to test drive the chair. It was a complete and utter dream, to be in control was empowering and so uplifting. It gave me such a boost. Since loosing the use of my leg I’ve been unable to take my son to school, such a basic task every parent does and it has devastated me. We weren’t entitled to help from the council as he’s not compulsory school age, my partners hours change every other week so he couldn’t take him, and Covid-19 has limited our options for help as we live in a Tier 3 area. Honestly with each week that was going past it was harder to figure out; this chair completely changes that, it enables me to get him there and back again. Knowing I can do this myself again brought me so much joy.

Posted in April 2013, Archive

Exciting & Empowering Day

Posted on by dystoniaandme

Today has been such a fantastic and empowering day! I had been looking forward to today all week as I had planned to go out and see a few friends and then have a personal training session. Normally my friends would come to see me, and I would sit in the middle of my bed so that if I do have a Non Epileptic Seizure I am safe. Instead I went out to my friend’s house, and my mum left me there on my own. This was the first time I had been left in someone else’s house on my own since July 2012. This excited and scared me. It turned out that I had no reason to be scared as it went perfectly. I spent the time sitting down, laughing with them and for a few hours felt like a normal 20-year-old. This has given me confidence to venture out more, I know that eventually my little Dystonia alien will act up but I cannot let the fear of that keep me from trying to establish a normal social life.

I had not been able to see my Personal Trainer for a few weeks as my spasms had been so bad and more of my body had been affected (only my left leg is unaffected now). As usual I was really looking forward to today’s session. I love our sessions as I am doing something proactive that not only challenges my little Dystonia alien but makes me feel positive about myself.

In today’s session my dystonia attempted to act up, and we worked around it. I paused when the spasms made it to hard to do that particular exercise but carried on as soon as it released. It was an extremely good session and I only had one tiny Non Epileptic Attack and a handful of spasms in it, which I thought was fab considering it had been a few weeks and my body’s not been great recently.

My Personal Trainer and I had previously discussed trying out a TENS machine to try to counteract the spasms. Whilst my hand was in spasm, he put the TENS machine up to full power and within a few seconds the spasm in my hand had released. The theory behind this is that to use a set of muscles another set has to relax, so by stimulating the relaxed muscles the spasming ones had no choice but to relax. The positive outcome it seemed to be having amazed me, it was like having a remote control for my Dystonia alien. I have no idea if this will happen on other parts of the body or if stronger/different spasms will react so positively, however this is an exciting experiment that I am going to enjoy greatly. I am planning on videoing my hand in spasm and how the TENS relaxes it, so that I can show my consultant.

If anyone has tried using a TENS  before for Dystonia please let me know, I would be extremely interested to hear how you got on with it. You can get in touch with me by either commenting on this post or by going to this page https://www.facebook.com/dystoniajourney where you can inbox me privately or comment publicly.