Adulthood With Cerebral Palsy

You don't expect your body to be your enemy when you're in your 20s, do you? When you grow up with a disability like Cerebral Palsy, it suddenly dawns on you that you might not be able to do the things that you can remember doing quite easily when you were younger... It can feel like you have been hit by a ton of bricks!

The sudden realisation that you may not have use of the limbs that you rely on daily is absolutely terrifying! A few weeks ago, I started to have a sharp pain in my big toe on my right foot when I moved it. A lot of people would say 'don't more it then'. Thanks for the tip... Even though I use my right little toe to type, the rest of my toes move with it for some unknown reason, so it isn't that easy. I have resorted to using the on-screen keyboard when I am typing, especially when I am typing out great big paragraphs. Doing it this way is extremely tedious though because I have to move my mouse to select each key. It does help when the on-screen keyboard predicts what I want to write, but it still is nowhere near as fast as I was able to type with the actual hardware keyboard.

Some people might say that it is no big deal, but actually, yes, it is a huge problem for me because I use my feet for everything and if for some reason, my feet were out of action, I would be well and truly stuffed! If the pain doesn't improve, I need to have a think about what to do because I can't carry on like this! I knew that I would have more problems with my body as I grew older, but I didn't expect it to manifest itself THIS quickly! At first, I thought that the problem could have been my shoe for my splints being too tight because I have started wearing them for longer periods of time. So I stuffed some balls in the end of the shoes to stretch them. It has helped in the sense that they don't feel as tight any more, but I don't think that is the problem because my toe is still hurting.

Taking this into account, I am hoping that I have only pulled a muscle or something like that because I need that foot! I am taking twice as long to type this out using the on-screen keyboard than when I just use the keyboard sat in front of me, and to be honest, I'm not enjoying it as much either. It takes more concentration to type this way and I make more mistakes too.

Whatever is causing this, I hope it gets better! It kind of worries me because I can't use my arms much and I feel that my muscle tone in my upper body and in parts of my legs have changed. I'm in two minds about finding out how my CP might affect me as I get older; do I ask or do I just enjoy what I have at the moment and deal with the problems when they arise or find out more now? Have you ever been in a similar situation? How did you deal with it?