Eventually, I got back on my feet once my blisters had healed on 10 December 2024 but I only walked a short distance before having to stop. Apart from the feeling that my feet were moving in the splints, it felt fine to start with, but as I walked further, my feet began to hurt again. I stopped straight away because I didn’t want to put myself through all that with the blisters again. Funnily enough, I knew exactly what the problem was: Besides from the new splints not being

As I mentioned in the first post, I have had three pairs of splints in the last few months. The original pair of new splints did not fit the shape of my feet at all… Something drastically went wrong with the mould. I think the Orthotist (the person who deals with Orthotics) forced my leg and foot into an unnatural position when they took the mould. It was painful too, which isn’t normal. When I looked at the mould, I thought that it looked weird (it didn’t look like my leg at

A couple of years ago, I saw an image of a girl wearing a pair of AFO splints with the caption “If you give a girl the right pair of shoes, she can conquer the world”. I didn’t think much of it until my recent issues with my splints. I can walk without splints but not long distances because I get tired easily when I have no support to control my movements, so I wear splints on my legs called Ankle-Foot Orthoses, also known as splints, but there are many types of splints. You

I haven’t always known, but I experience burnouts and shutdowns. When I was at college, me having a burnout looked like I was isolating myself. I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone, not even the staff. I would just sit there doing my work without talking. When it came to break time and lunch time, I would talk to people, but only on and off. I sat in the cafeteria because my friend liked to sit there to eat, but I really didn’t like it because it got so loud and crowded, it felt

April is Autism Acceptance/Awareness Month. Autistic Spectrum Disorder is a developmental disability, which affects a person’s understanding and communication, as well as how they view the world. Yes, I have CP and you can see my CP. Yes, I am Autistic, but you cannot see my Autism. People are so quick to judge a person on their behaviours and not accept people for who they are, but in fact, if they bothered to get to know the person inside, they would see a whole different p

I have always known that it shouldn’t matter what other people think about me, but I always have these thoughts in the back of my mind saying that something is wrong with me and I’m not good enough. As Pink (P!nk) says in her song, “You can push me out the window, I’ll just get back up. You can run over me with your 18 wheeler truck and I won’t give a fuck”. I don’t know about you, but this says to me that you shouldn’t let anything or anyone tell you to change or stop being

When we queried the effects of the medication with the doctor, they told us to stop the medicine immediately, just as the pharmacist said. They said that other medicines of this type are likely to have the same kind of effect. When it was explained to me, it made a lot of sense… Anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs work to correct the chemical imbalance in the brain and as my brain is damaged, the medicine had a negative effect on my brain, making my involuntary movements w

In the early stages of taking the medication, I tried using my walking frame because the side effects were meant to go away, and I needed to get on with my life even if my body wasn’t playing ball at the time. That didn’t end well at all! I had separate splints that go inside the full leg splints. I always sit on the sofa to put my splints on, and I had one splint on but I needed to push myself back, so I put my feet down, but my left foot wouldn’t go flat, so I had to push w

In May I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. As I said in the beginning, I knew that I had mental health issues from the age of 16 or 17, but I thought that it was temporary. I thought and hoped that it was just because of teething problems relating to major changes in my life, like transitioning from school to college, but I couldn’t have been further from the truth… In the last few months, my mental health has become a lot worse. Probably a combination of things happ

I don’t have many friends; I only have three or four really good friends, and they mean the world; I honestly don’t know what I’d do without them. Two of them have seen me at my best and worst times, and I know they will be there for me through thick and thin, even when the world feels like it’s crashing down on top of me and I can’t begin to explain what’s going on. Neither of these people realise how amazing they are, nor do they realise how much they mean to me! I’ve alway

At college, I made one friend in the class, but even though this may sound horrible, I didn’t feel like she was a true friend, more of an acquaintance. I had this person around for a few hours at my parent’s house once, and to be honest, I didn’t feel one hundred per cent comfortable with her, and I realised that I only made friends with her because I thought it was the “right” thing to do at that age and my college encouraged me to make friends. Soon after my second year of

Written between 27 May and 12 December 2024 I only remember having three friends throughout primary school, and we soon drifted apart once we moved to senior school.   Looking back on my life at senior school, I now realise that I only had about three or four friends throughout the five years I was there. I didn’t realise this then, but I didn’t have conversations with other pupils apart from my immediate friends. I have struggled with my mental health for many years, more sp

I can walk with bare feet, but as you read in my last post, I wear ankle-foot orthoses, better known as A.F.Os or splints when I’m walking in my frame because I don’t have full control over my tone, therefore sometimes I walk on my tip-toes when I concentrate on other things. At one point, I saw a physiotherapist who said that this was spasticity and although I do have spasticity to varying degrees in different parts of my body, and in my opinion, I don’t think she fully unde

Did you start singing Pink’s “Walk of Shame” when you read the title of this post? Anyway, as you may know, I can’t walk without some kind of support, however, I walk most days when the weather is good. I bought my walking frame in 2019, thanks to the amazing people who donated to my fundraising page. I didn’t get much chance to use it until I got my flat because there was no room around my mum and dad’s house, but since I’ve had my own home, I’ve had more opportunities to go

Carrying on with my last post, about the switches on my clipboard on my bed, although I learned approximately where my switch for my lamp is, I still have problems with finding it in the dark because I have to feel for it with my foot whilst my foot is under the covers… So, to help with this, I bought some glow-in-the-dark stickers. I bought different-sized circular stickers and one big roll of glow-in-the-dark tape, I bought both because I didn’t know which would be best. Th