It’s a wonder I haven’t grown up thinking my name is ‘Slow Down Be Careful Dowling/Lee’
I have been accident prone all my life, since I can remember! I lost count how many times I fell down the stairs as a child. We lived in a flat in the middle of a big Victorian house.
The family that lived underneath us would hear the ‘bang bang bang thud’ at least once a week, as I hit the bottom of the stairs and say “Susan’s taking the rubbish out”.
It was thought that it was partly because I was just plain clumsy, partly because I was a nosey kid and partly because I was always rushing around! ☄️
As I grew up it became more obvious that a lot of my accidents WERE because I was rushing around but I got into my 40’s and I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). Now I won’t go into too much detail about EDS, only that it’s a collagen defect, there are 6 types and I have Type 3. It’s the Hypermobility type and it’s not that I have too much collagen or too little, there is just a defect within the collagen. This makes me extremely bendy and it’s because of that, that I have very poor muscle tone and hypermobility in my joints , the worst place for me is my feet and ankles, which is why I am always falling over, (it really isn’t because of the alcohol, well occasionally it might have been when I was younger! ?) The other problem it creates is sub-luxation and dislocation of the joints and this causes a lotof pain, along with arthritis throughout the body.
A few weeks ago I fell whilst crossing the road, and managed to dislocate my left shoulder ?I have never encountered anything like it in my life, the pain was horrendous. You would think as a Hypnotherapist and OldPain2Go Practitioner I would have been able to put myself into trance and deal with it, well no way! I couldn’t focus enough on my breathing to be able to do that, they said I would be sore for a little while and gave me Codeine to take, but this is where my training in Hypnosis and OP2G comes in. Because now I have got rid of the ‘Acute Pain’ I can deal with the ‘Chronic Pain’ through Self Hypnosis and the OP2G Methodology, they are fantastic tools!
Unfortunately for me I managed to dislocate it again 4 days later even worse because the 2nd time round it came out not forwards from the front, but unusually from the back and went behind! So, I’ve now been told to keep my arm in a sling for 3 weeks. I’ve mostly done as I’ve been told, as frustrating and irritating as it is, until I got up this morning and went downstairs without my sling on and started to put the clean glasses away, then blow me, I stepped back without thinking and tripped over the dogs bed and out it popped again….. I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT! This time I was able to push it back in thank god, I just hope this isn’t going to be a regular occurrence; it really isn’t a pleasant experience.
So sling back on as a I write this blog, giving myself a damn good talking to about slowing down, having a serious think about being more mindful and the things I’m doing…….I think it’s called ‘PRACTISING WHAT YOU PREACH’. ?
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