Human rights? huh? wha that? in Ireland? ye joking!

seriously folks,
Ireland, little Ireland wouldn't have a notion of what human rights was if it hit it in the face, if it had a face.

certain sectors of professional society that is!

Yes, you have got it in one...the famous HSE again. Woa jackpot.

I am utterly livid after a visit to a neighbour who is over the 85yrs of age  mark.

she may be old folks, but she is as clear as a bell and when you are that clued in, no one messes with these ladies, no one.
but some people tried, and failed.

Lets tell you the story.

she was in hospital recently as she has been getting fits of falling (remember her age now).

so that was being investigated.
so far so good.
but she then was told she could go home by the doctor.
but on the day she was to be going she had asked for her niece to be told as she didn't have clothes nor the key to her house.
but for four full days they managed to delay and delay and make every excuse under the sun about all this and it was a bank holiday weekend too so that didn't help.

what happened was the niece was informed that she was to be at this old lady's house and that there she would meet with the hospital OT.
Yep that crowd again, you do love em don't you?

so she was.

I can picture it just picture it.
Lady grey lying in the geriatric ward wanting to be at home.
lady grey in her nightie being forgotten.

her niece in her home, the trusted relative and she is trusted and still is trusted.
but no not so the OT.
In comes the OT
'that has to go...
that has to be moved...
this must be moved, all those top presses have to be cleared out.
the mats have to go.
the carpet runner in hall has to be taken away.
and if it doesn't happen she is not coming home, she is going into a nursing home.

this little old lady lives alone.
if she dies in her house alone that is her problem and she is of sound mind so she has to take that responsibility.
you cannot simply cannot deny a person their human rights.

And human rights is...you have to ask permission of a home owner if they can go into their home when they are not there and unless you have their permission you are trespassing and doing so is against the law.

You cannot tell a home owners relative what to do to the owners home, when the owner is of sound mind and has all her marbles and pays property tax and worked all her life to have the home she wanted, and the way she wanted it.

You cannot demand of anyone to do anything to another persons property.
its against the law.
property rights in all countries is very strong.

and rightly so.
they cost a fortune and you work damn hard for your roof over your head or most do anyway.

You also cannot deny a persons human rights and that is law.
she has her rights to the way she wants her home no matter how elderly.
no matter what sugar bowl will fall on her head and knock her out and make her fall over the cooker and then burn the house down, killing her in the process, its all hers and no one else.

What you can do is discuss all her options, when she allows you into her home, and you are there by agreement.
but you cannot make a person do something against their will, unless they are suffering dementia and this lady is not.

when the niece told the lady still in hospital what was happening the old lady called the doctor and told him she was consulting her solicitor and was leaving the hospital and they would be hearing from her solicitor.
they made sure she got home.

when she got home she put everything back where they always were and life got back to normal for her.
at 90 housework and systems rule OK.
and that's the way she had known her home and that's the way she understood it, felt secure and happy in her own home, she loved every inch of it, over decades.

Like a bloody big wet room nearly foisted on me against my will i would have been so destabilised by this as this old lady would have been that it no longer would have felt my home.

Like this old lady i had OT's coming into my home and measuring up for the wet room and me standing there in anguish until i ran them and then got a label for doing so.

Like this old lady i too know about human rights and am in the process of discussing all this with a solicitor.

another thing, the niece was told which is criminal and which is also illegal, that if these things were not done the old lady was next to the nursing home and wasn't going home.

that my friend is blackmail pure and simply and coersion, and illegal.

All these laws are written in stone but as Ireland is Ireland the hard work of chiseling on stone means nothing and specially in the hse.  it is either dismissed or revered, depending.

 anything written by the HSE about a client is sacrosanct but everything else is sent to one department to another and another, especially if you are claiming your rights are being violated.

you then get the label of 'persistent complainant behaviour!'  Yes, but there is no such thing in law.
you can be called all sorts of behaviours, some are legal and some are  makie uppie.
in most cases things are makie uppie.

and we do nothing about any of this.
most of us (or yous put up with all this ) and that's how it sort of self perpetuates.
nothing changes until we all start challenging these things.

why oh why do we allow so much in this country to continue in such an insidious manner and not demand change by constantly routing out what is wrong doing.
all i have mentioned is wrong, wrong wrong and there is no other way of looking at it.

its wrong.
its written down as legally wrong.
its wrong.

read my lips.
its wrong.
I am angry.
yes, angry.
them fancy ones with the measuring tapes in my own home i own.
those fancy ones in a decent lady's home with their demands of her poor niece under threat, that's wrong.

Stalin?
who is he?
or she, or them or that.
Alive and well in holy Ireland my friends.

and the lady with the hair band and bangs is putting her foot down.

she is not paying her property tax, she is single, coming up to 90 has no dependents and she said someone else can sort that out when she dies.

now this lady is a modern woman!
I like her a lot so i do.

what living is about

yes, i have thought about this one and thought hard and deep too.

It ISNT about fighting for just about everything in your life, but that seems to be the way it is if you are sick and disabled.

I watch the beautiful ladies and hansome men around jogging, they are my age....i do not jog, i do not walk, and both would be agony anyway.

I watch the older ladies and men walk their dogs...i would love to do this...but i cannot and i am far too tired right now and forever more with mito disease so it isnt an option.

i see the people drink at the coffee shops and laugh and joke.
I cannot sit in such hard chairs, i hardly hear anything because i am very deaf and besides i dont know enough people to enjoy such a gathering.

I know many are enrolling in evening classes, but i am dead by four and rarely go out after that.
i wouldnt hear much anyway and i couldnt sustain the pace nor the concentration and would be half asleep fifteen minutes into the class.

these are normal activities eh?
and yes, i would like to do something along these lines, which can and are possible.

lets take the jog and the walking, can i go out on the pavements and travel happily without the pain and agony and exhaustion that both these activities can and do cause?  Can i say, sit in a powered chair and watch around me, view the greens, smell the autumn and just be part of all that is around me?  well not now i cannot because i have a clapped out powered chair, which constantly lose bits and important bits like wheels and control panels.

can i walk the dogs, yes, i can if i wasnt so tired and spent half my life fighting for basic needs, again the flipping powered chair, if i had this and also was less tired, i could do this in small measure, and i would enjoy it.

what about the chat over coffee?  yes, i can do this, with one or two people in a quiet environment but no more.  I would love this, but in my new home area know absolutely no one yet - as the fighting continues for my basic needs to be met.

classes?  I wish, but the best are reserved for the workers of the world who do such after the working.
i dont work, and by four i am dead.
but surely people are interested in the best during the daytime if they do not work, and there are a lot that do not.  why cannot we have some daytime interest with variety of choice for all of us have different needs.
i would be able for this, cos in the day time i have more energy.

so much of my time and energy is still constantly fighting the hse over powered chairs and access to local services and the dynamic of politic is not what i want to do now aged 60yrs.

i want to begin to be at peace, to enjoy to live and also to create.
not be on the phone from rising time to lunch time.
and not to be at the doctors crying due to depression over such a fight as i was today.

the fight is for just about everything - physio, special shoes, wheelchairs, hearing aids, doctors appointments, bloods, care, pa's coming on time, home helps arriving.

it isnt normal my life, but it doesnt have to be THaT abnormal either.
it can be actually half enjoyable, but if not that, interesting and fulfilling.
i am in a lot of pain so i cannot ever now hope to be estatic about life.
but i have some work to do and it isnt doing the politics over basics with the HsE.

certainly they are creating enough material to document how it has been for myself and this is a testament i can leave behind when i snuff it for others to feel horrified and angry as i have and am and always am these days.

can i not do my bird watching in peace?
can i not have that bucket list of badger, otter, kingfisher and seeing ireland rather than fight for better than the bucket of a wheelchair to do these things.

surely to god i have a right to free movement in my environment with as much ease as is possible or equable to others, more fortunate in the leg and energy department?

i am not a 'nothing,' or a blob.
i am a human being and we are special so they say
so special that every religion known to the species of man dictate that we must consider others, must consider those less fortunate and must care for the sick.
does it happen in reality.
not at all.

but i would like to feel that one day it will all come back and we find some care in the psyche of the humans i am dealing with anyway.

care and humanity in this neck of the woods is hard to find.  i havent found it anyway.
i do know there are kind people about, but managers get in the way of these.
the managers dont care a shit toss, they are dealing with budgets and payments and costs.

they have lost the ideal, of considering how best to make this single human being life worthy of living it in peace and justified help in any shape possible.
for we are the species that is special.
we have the religion see

I am tired of talking, tired of phoning and tired of the HSe.
Living is not about the HSE.  its about living with mito and thats not the same but m living can be had out there but its not coming fast at all at all.
long winded with no picutres this evening, but its been a long day with the hse and the solicitors etc.
off o sleep before i decide on tis n a ee sort o way.

What is 'the wheelchair' about?

               a duck !  oh, i think its a goose!!

My twin and i had strolled along the banks of the River Slaney at dawn.
we had our sticks and each other.
all was quiet, a few ducks traced the water.
a redness gathered ahead at the horizon and all was very still.

it was glorious.  a hint of autumn in the damp air.
a feeling of freshness, beauty and joy consumed us.
we were for a while at total peace.

we enjoyed this stroll like no other on our hols so far

Maragaret didn't get much sleep.
i got a restless one and i had a lot of pain so we were out by 6am, away from a hot room and out in the air to try ease up pain mostly and stiffness.

When we awakened our thoughts were with the HSE.
i woke with that sticky dry fungusy mouth and in there was - the HSE.
Margaret had been typing on email on her mobile about the wickedness of the HSE.  she and i thinking on this too much and for far too long.

but lest think though further, on the walk.
We were two women walking.

Slow walking ducks!

we were slow yes, and all could see that, and all too could see we did walk with difficulty but we were walking.

so whats it with the wheelchairs.

Yes, you might ask and say 'whatsit about the wheelchairs.'

Should a person who can walk a few hundred yards be given a wheelchair and a powered one at that?

here is the dynamic of walking.
Walking is - Pain.
but if we do not walk, the pain is atrocious all over.
but if we do walk we get exhausted quicker and the pain is more intense in the legs and knees and hips.
but we walk to keep internal organs moving and going.
we walk to get the oxygen in.
we HAVE to walk in order not to seize up.

but we CANNOT walk when other things are up for consideration.
we have a balance and cognitive difficulty.
so going through areas of a lot of people its impossible, three minutes or less of this we can be in a complete collapsed state not knowing how our brain can think of the function of walking, navigating through the people and noise and we are a mess shattered.

Energy is the problem.
Energy.
We have mitochondrial disease, Mito is the problem, Mito deals with energy only, its their only function, ours is diseased, throughout our body it is diseased, we have less and less energy as the Mito fails further and further, its what i half heartily call 'a slow take out.'

Walking with not a sound or impediment to thought or care leaves ALL of our energy focused on the act of a short walk.

But if there is spin, chaos, clatter and clutter plus stress, talking and thinking we cannot do all this.
so what is the best way forward.

the best way forward is...the electric powered wheelchair.
this my friend is fantastic.
can you imagine how much it can make a free person of a sick person with too much to manage all at the same time.
we can put our finger on the control knob, we can move slowly and we don't have to strain, the muscles which cannot act so quickly or with complexity when all around is too complex.

Simplicity when so ill and unwell.
Simplicity with muscle wasting and weakness means we 'cannot do this,' and causes a sit down in protest of ever getting back up cos its all far too much.

We then do not have to think of one thing, pain in the legs for a while at least.
Knowingly we shall have to walk to ease the body out completely but not done amidst chaos as we would be dead for days.

Wheelchairs are there for a myriad of reasons.
some are in them permanently and some use them intermittently and some are increasingly using them more hours then they used to, as time goes on.
\
we now are in this final phase.
the Chairs are with us always, powered up always and on the ready always.

the Wheelchairs are used daily, continuously without fail.
the Wheelchairs allow us live in any shape or fashion and its not a luxury, its a reason to be alive at all.
Existing is a concept of the Neantheral man when living and existing meant just staying alive one more day cos being eaten by the woolly mammoth was not an option, we have my friends moved on since then.
we are a sophisticated clan now, and for us we should have a sophisticated way of looking at disability, movement and dealing with people with disability.
and as a last spear to kill the concept of care, we are afraid friends, very afraid that the concept of care of our HSE deserves that spear, for us, we are facing that jaguar, the one of past times and we face it with our spears.
go man go, roll man rolls, rock man rock, wheel man go and roll and run but far from the HSE Please

the rock and roll wheelers

them tired old wheels, and the tired old boat, on the raging seas and the ship wrecks

we are on the last stretch of our holiday.
a holiday created to rest, forget and attempt to chill.

"oh how fantastic eh Mags?  isnt it beautiful....?"

Its time they let us  enjoy eh, sis?

a holiday to de-stress and forget and attempt to regain strength, especially psychological stamina for tthe battles that are ahead.

the challenges for my twin and i are and will be mighty.
there isnt the support there.
there are the basic of statutory supports in place and even some of the basics are literally falling apart.
but twin and i show guts so we do.

i am unsure if this can be considered a holiday.
how many have to be brought up sharp on a break away from the chaos of the HSE to get online to find another offensive email from them to say i am being reassessed for a motorised wheelchair.  I have been assessed in february this year!
why again?
and why tell me now?

also is it useful also that the HSE have now given me an OT from Wicklow, which is a lot nearer than Arklow but not as near as James Reilly had intended, Primary care teams spring to mind, where he dictated that all in a local area would be able to access care and community services locally.
but actually wicklow town is not 'local' for me.

the distress of being targeted in such a way is wearing me down in a major way and all i can think of its supposed to!

this must be the very reason why disabled people in ireland fight for so little and fight for it less visibly than any other country i know.
we just are not there doing what we should.
fighting for our rights and our dignity and being courageous of stating our needs and attempting to have them met.
its only this way can able bodied people see that we do firstly have needs but that we can and do get these met.
but mostly because, its our right to have our basic needs met.

we are not talking about something wild and exotic and extraordinary.
when disabled people fight, they fight for things that no one else needs to in such a way:
help in getting up in the morning.

oh i remember the days with fondness when i ate wet sandwiches on the Saltee Islands with Birdwatch Ireland.

to stay in the community and not be put away in some dying cage.
to move around the community areas freely and safely, eg in a motorised wheelchair.
to be able to drive a van without being penalised and told well you have a van why so the mobility wheelchair then?

to have to justify trying to have a life, is something able bodied people do not even blink about.
they know they have a life, they live it and never think twice.
but some disabled people are dealing with major issues which are basic.
mobility, washing, dressing, eating and lastly living.
its not usual to put Living and living well at the end of a list like this.
if you cannot get out of bed, cannot eat, cannot wash and do all this independently then you cannot begin to live.

also its wrong for anyone to threaten us with less than what we should expect because we ask for it.
it is wrong for anyone to interfere in our lives, without actually being part of our lives.
it is also wrong to make our lives harder than they have to be.

but when i say too that wheelchairs roll.
my twin and i are attempting to have a short holiday.
a week is not a long time after three and a half years of hell is it?
no it isnt.
and living for most is easy eh?
well, more or less, certainly better than someone ill and disabled.
so we go on this holiday and try to do it in best cheer but certainly cannot in best chair.
my twin twice swung round as the joy stick didnt obey her command to stay straight and not head for gullies and campers.
she wants to guide her legs, in the shape of a wheelchair in a straight line and not toward the caverns or the dangers of oncoming traffic.

it is a right of ours to stay in a straight line!

i shouldnt have to be in a machine that whines loudly in my right hearing aid.
and worry if the wheel will fly again soon.

who will be making our holidays impossilbe soon.
it will be of course of famous howling, 'not fit for purpose' hse.

we have not really enjoyed this much.
we are too tired to pretend to be like others, do what others do and still have enough left over to enjoy ourselves.

we need more help to enjoy to be truthful.
who will drive us.
who will stear the wheelchairs.
who will go to the bar and order.
and go to the bank and queue if we run out of cash (that sounds very funny in our times i have to say).
and who can make sure we can get our luggage packed, unpacked brought to the room where we hit the sack and do all this again in reverse.

what happens is,
we have to get up before the breakfast ends at 10 and we are actually still dead by this time.
we then go out for a few hours and we are grumpy to each other cos we both are ill and find it hard to deal with each others foibles.
we get a few good hours in the middle.
and sometimes half way through the end
but we do by the time 2pm comes along just want to be horizontal.
mags my twin flung onto the bed this evening at 7pm after we went for some food.
"I am not sure i can do holidays anymore'\
in truth we cant.
since that statment my twin has been fast asleep, she still in her jacket and hard shoes.
she is too tired to even move.

Love, kindness,help and companionship and a better spirit from the HSE would all go a long way to help twins aged 60 see out their last years in peace, harmony and ease.
no we dont ask much and not alot more than that.

Peace and harmony is not alot to ask

we are 60.  we just want a bit of 'soft around the edges.' so to speak.
and some help, but that is not rocket science or too much to ask, given we are so severely ill and alone.
tonight i ask the HSE primarily to get off my personal back and try see me and my twin and our relationship and how you are even trying to destroy that, but see us as - wait for it - geriatrics trying to make up for lost time and enjoy what we have left to enjoy and enjoy what we can of each other, after over 40 yrs apart.

A little distance and a lot of sleep plus connection

Dawn on another day.

among the rocks is a little soft being hiding against the harshness, hoping to find nourishment there some time...so it waits...patiently.

A little distance, a lot of sleep and a nice bit of connection.

OMG to get away and cause that distance from stress.
so badly needed and known to be so.

the first half day and the night went badly.
i wondered had i done the right thing.

Feeling unwell and jaded does that you know.
Because you feel so not up to adventure even if it was going to be a 'stillness within' and a bail out of my type, but financial burdens yes, for can i afford this, no.

I am known to do this you know.

for a few years i took off to glendalough, to the mountains around the holy sanctum of our Kevin.
there i sat alone in a stone hut and usually was - distraught.

this time not so.
i didn't go to the wilds and sit it out alone.
not that i couldn't cope with that sort of bail out, i could and yearned it over and over and indeed travelled over and over.
this time i am ill and tired, too ill to lie in a hard single bed and stoke warmed from the wood burner.
i wanted very instant softness and closeting.
as in hotel style but i chose that because i needed out quick and didn't know the area.
i am staying here two nights and then it is off to a B&B.

I wanted escape from the HSe, far away and forget them, all of them and you know this is insanity that you run from your new county into yet another, to get away from stress and distressed caused by a health provider.

Its insanity when i say that the Health Provider has dragged my health status downwards so alarmingly so that i became frightened at where it all would end.
Lets hope ending in Co.Wexford will do the trick.
I am now on extended leave as they say.
From the job of the fighting with the HSE.

We now know the wheelchair fell apart and remained in the side room here in the hotel.
I did a great cellotape job on the arm today and that will go up photo style when i click it tomorrow ok?
well i did receive two communications regarding this chair.
I was warned that the local OT had already received an earful by one of the new natives in my new county so i was to be gentle.

it was so peaceful at touching six this morning sitting on the harbour wall in Wexford Town.

i felt gentle actually cos i guess being away eases it all, it had done anyway and i felt that bit gentle.
driving along with the gizmo in the rear i heard my mobile tinkle.  i pulled off road and spoke with the gentle voice for it was that too.

I learnt something during that gentle call on all sides for a change.
People have felt for me, really have.
some anyway realise now that i have been put through the wringer, and was it actually necessary.
I ask that question, but i think others are as well.
its about time that the tide turned.

i felt that this could be a start.
i have felt it easing already with the other professional within the HSE on the local level.
two women now actually do believe that some how and for reasons unknown i have had a dreadful time and caused by the HSe.

they are dealing with a SICK woman aged 60yrs of age after all!
this that ever strike them?
well, today on the side of the road by a Maxol garage i felt it had.

we spoke gently of the wheelchairs.
i told this healthy woman from the hse that i cannot deal with items like the wheelchairs given us for we, us twins, cannot cope with bits falling off and did she actually think that we could?
i explained to her, gently, that i have never seen my twin in so much pain over the weekend in her butt structure.
that part that hits concrete road hard when struck by a bike in hackney.
this is a butt strike so hard she is wrecked ever since, and since that too she has become sick see, and i want people to remember that.
we are dealing with an injury and post trauma of that injury and we also dealing with further decline in her body aka spine, discs and muscles turning to fat.
yes, they are, actually changing structure.
and she is asked to travel miles on bumpy roads and cracks, cracking her butt along with the dodgy discs so ending in excruciating pain over a full long and very long weekend and more because of sitting and bumping along in a bloody wheelchair from friggin hell.

she had rung me nicely and welcomed, because this same chair which is supposedly the better of the two had lost its side panel.
the part that makes all go.  the part that makes these items go, not the wheels go round so that they fly off but the part that makes the wheels go round.
it flew off and hit the deck fast and hard so it did.
she had rung to ask where i was and where was this gizmo.

i had explained then that it was behind me and stuck up with sticky cellotape, yards of it, wrapped in mummy style.
bound and held never to go again, as in fly off.
but also i told her i didn't think it was right in the electrical department, as in it didn't do what it was supposed to do or asked to do. move left when instructed by the joy stick or right when instructed by the joy stick.
so it was now unreliable and dangerous.
i felt too it far more dangerous than a wheel falling off in fact, because of being unpredictable, it could go anywhere and with wheels attached, anywhere could be into the middle of the road and not make the rest of the carcass, when wheels become detached, head for a wall instantly, and come to a stop more or less ins tantly.

she told me that she was documenting all these issues as they occurred.
i giggled gently and told her nicely that i was too, in my blogs.

but i did feel primarily that this lady and the last lady finally heard the truth.  I had been through hell and back with the hse and i had been through a rough time and now paying for it by bailing out costing me money rather than put me in a respite which is where i should be and not in a hotel.
we don't DO respite any more.
we don't seemingly do Health anymore either.

but again i don't fully believe its all caused at local level.
the directives are brutal but i believe some get it more brutal than others, and i happened to be one that was going to be hit, fast hard but also on a prolonged basis, like over five years now but the last two are sentences for the first three, this has been a murder charge sentence.
and its been very tough.

when people Analise stuff like this, underneath a human being is a beating heart.  it causes a thinking process and i believe once people begin to think they begin a process.
lets hope this is now happening.
I couldn't go  on indefinitely with the behaviours of a few cauing mayhem in my personal life because some one called angela merkel of another state tells them to cut down and cut out certain individuals, and in doing so destroy their lives entirely.
I will blame the fact we sold our souls.

and we sold them at the cost of the individual.
the individual who couldn't even make anyone see reason.
make anyone at all take the hand of the aggrieved and end it.
if i had merkel her today and to night my words would not be pretty.
she has slayed a nation, but only the nation who could not feel strong enough to answer back.
the bankers didn't get it.
the politicians didn't really get it.
nor did the upper middle classes or those who actually brought finance into the country as a whole.
those in Avoca didn't get it, but those in the Noggin certainly did!

and here we find that democracy doesn't rule for anyone because we are in a slaughterhouse.
that slaughterhouse is killing souls, destroying faith in humanity and destroying quality of lives for those who could do with it more than the rich.
quality of life is ONE LIFE. it begins at birth and can if you are lucky last for eighty years.
but some do not live that long and even if they did, wouldn't you feel that that compared with billions of years of the earths existence that these creatures should have a quality about them.
we, the nation and the people took billions of years to come to this point in time.
we evolved to live a certain time.
and who kills it all.
humans, who evolved along side those who have it very tough indeed.

so my eighty years is equal to Angela and enda, but is it?
well it is.
and this my friends means wheelchairs that do not lose bits.
a day and night where an individual has a lot less pain than inflicted by health service executives.
a lot more sleep and not suffer two and a half years of sleep deprivation due to worry, pain and thinking of the future.
its been horrible.
i wonder as i sat there on the side of the dirt road, sitting in a van with a gizmo to my rear stuck up with cellotape did i see a glimpse of softness and gentleness between us women there chatting.
that Ann has surely had her belly full of HSE for the past two and a half years and time had now come for it to end and for this one single individual end her allotted time on this planet to the best of the HSE ability.
is that a possibility.
lets see, lets see. Lets see.
meanwhile i shall catch up on sleep.

WARNING - Wheelchair loses more 'bits'

WELL FAR AWAY FROM THE HSE!

ENNISCORTHY STOP TO STRETCH!

This is a HSE directive.

Will you please recall all your powered wheelchairs you are cobbling together at Ballyhaunis!

if this wasnt so serious it would be funny, not divine comedy but literally, a comedy of errors.

What are you doing putting four machines on the one?
taking a wheel that is good from one machine and lego like putting it on to a chasis that is ok to hold it, more or less.

We have had one accident to date, a serious one.
A very serious one when my wheelchair hit a wall as the wheel flew and making me and the chair beome firmly embedded in the wall, remember this.

I needed out.  I mean out of a situation that was tension extraordinaire.
and i needed away from HSE and the dynamics that have been building like a tsunami for over two years.
i was at break point and all agreed the stage was set for more than wheelchairs breaking down.

with a good deal of encouragement i left town.
i got into my van and drove to Wexford.

in the van was my twin sisters powered chair.
she had given me it to tide me over for a few days.
mine is in a very fragile state.
so i have this one.
it wasnt that much better i have to say.

it has in less than a year shredded its tyres which were bald and should not have been costing me to have to pay E50 to get it back home.
Yes, i had borrowed the item, because mine is too horrible and dangerous for words.
can we see if this one is any better?

so next to happen the machine, margarets machine stopped dead after a full day out.
not through lack of power.
no, lack of a single magnet which most owners are given free when they buy a powered chair.
sometimes the stearing gets locked as if they get jammed computer like.
so now she has a small magnet.

ah this awful machine caused twin to be in agony all day yesterday.  Unbelievable pain.
she had traveled on dart to St. Vincents, just as i had when the wheel fell off.
its a bumpy journey and a very sedentary one.
you sit it out and ride on - mate.
she had her echo cardiogram.
she returned.
she bumped and bumped all the way home...wheeeeee....wheeee....
no its not good.
my twin has major spine crumbling issues, had been knocked down by a bike and had severe injury to a sacrial ilial joint, no i dont know how to spell that!
so can you imagine what a bucket, which is better than mine but still not suitable, can cause to a body that is literally falling apart, itself!

so this item of my twins, from the HSE, given as a temporary from Ballyhaunis where all old wheelchairs, powered chairs are being reconditioned there and re-cycled out to the poor sods with back injury, recovering from spinal truama, ms, parkinsons, dystophy and mito disease - us.

i took it out for a few days to forget HSE problems.
but sure as bloody hell the HSE is on my back!
or more like it, on my rump as i bump and bump and stop and carve and tease a gizmo not willing, simply not willing to do its job.

on the way back from horror the whole panel of electrics to my right hand fell away, yep hit the deck on the concrete and there i stared at it, ligthts flashing and it, lying on the path but attached to the chair by an umbilical cord.

a geezer passing with a dog tried to put it so i could return to base, my two day holiday bed!

i bumped in and decided a toilet stop was essential.  it was a stop alright.

for the power left, mito style, in magnitude to lack of energy of us mitos.
it ceased anywhere forward or back but the control panel collapsed onto the carpet with a soft thud.

it remains where it fell.
i am sitting softly not too far away.

Can you see the lady from the toilet hold the control panel in her hand?
 THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ATTACHED!

i am thinking that the HSE is going to haunt me now til days end.
if its not one thing its another.

especially when it comes to wheelchairs.
sick, yes as a parrot.
i am sick of it all.

ann

Caught without the teeth in-this time!

Many times since relocating i have wanted 'away with the fairies'

Honest.

we ARE living in dangerous times.  WE all ARE suffering.

I mean it, we are suffering....

I think this is what can happen, stuffed and on a top shelf as we go mad!

but let me ask you one thing.  When we are finding the road so tough can it be right to trample on others when fed up - er, with your job!

we have a situation now that its quite easy to suddenly be hated in society.
So easy it can take five minutes and last two and a half years!

Honest.

What i wish to fully understand that in most wars and post wars and even mid wars people are known to watch over each other and do far more protecting then usual than in peace time.

so what has happened this sort of phenomena?
We are at war no?

We are at war with cuts to salaries, cuts to lifestyle and cuts to grants, disability payments and household charges, mortgages and fuel bills all rising and debt is rife.

that equates to War on a personal level to fight to stay alive, to stay fed and warm and to remain sane and honest.

but whats this about trampling all over another, and the usual trampling all over the least able?

because in war times, past that's not the way it was done.
the least came first not last.
they actually did.
Except for the holocaust and i hope that was an exception to the rule.

many times it feels like its creeping back to society that the least able in the collective thinking, the economic thinking are suckers instead of just being what we are - bloody unfortunate.

No, i didn't really have a life style like Cowen and Bertie nor did i attempt to run any country.
i just tried to stay in budget on a pension, which was all my life staying in budget on a pension.

I didn't either defraud, hide, misappropriate funds nor swindle my neighbours.

I used what was mine, and only mine always.

I didn't think that i should have a philosophy of spend now and worry a long mile down the road.

I am a worrier so my thinking doesn't stretch that far.

but what about the whys of why we are picked upon.
so much so that now the pros are telling us what to do, as in how to do up your houses fgs.
more like it change its structure so unbelievably that you will never recognise it as the vision you had set for yourself and your own home.

but what about this two and a half years result of being hated after a five minute spat with a woman who was leaving a house where two women were collapsed in bed and hardly able to cook an egg and when the healthy home help didn't either, you kinda lost the plot a bit.

this send shock waves throughout and suddenly all hell broke lose and still hell is burning, its very hot let me tell you.
all over an egg!  FGS!  I fried but not that fecking egg for sure.

two and a half years later i am brutally 'spent.'
weary and wojus i want out, like.

because we have a policy here that no one solves problems, much.
they sort of linger like underarms without deodorant.

it hadn't felt fair at the time and two and a half years later still doesn't seem fair.

now let me go back to the war situation for a minute.

we are in this sort of WAR.
No?
Well, YES actually we are.

We have less able bodied people in society Yes?
or should that be NO?
Well YES we do, we actually do.

So in this WAR which we are in, can we  not protect rather than demolish and destroy?

Smile...Smile...Smile...Smile...!

You might actually be destroying the best part of humanity here.

Say for instance three fat ladies with disabilities had the most hilarious sense of humour out, and you bash em to bits for some 'odd' reason you then have three miserable fat ladies and rest assured there is nothing worse than three miserable fat ladies.

So why in WAR would you PREFER three fat miserable ladies when you could have three hilarious hoots?

And then if your neighbour too decided to bash the least fortunate because of being grumpy and disgruntled, he or she may bash more, this time skinny men or skinny women or a collective.

so we are now producing so many miserable fat, skinnies and whingers that its insufferable to live amongst.
we now have a rugby scrum with no washed underarms.
its a hell and it stinks to high heaven.

I don't know why we chose this for ourselves or the less able.

Lets all jump on a very big trampoline which will be erected shortly outside the dail.
cos everyone is going to be hopping and jumping the day the DAIL resumes.
Lets try and jump eh or sing (even laugh) collectively and shout, scream and roar as a group, collectively for everyone in this country who either is being grumped at or grumpy or pissed off or hungry, ill, sickened and destroyed by CUTS.

Look at the scales mate...those at the bottom get it worse.
and there lies or stands or sit the disabled and least able.
so it makes sense to do this in an inclusive manner
Will you hold that bloody banner up for the likes of me and my sister who are being trampled on by this government, the f...hse and the grumpies of this land.
and i don't think for a minute i did single handedly bring down this country.
Can you hold that banner in the left hand say and then do a 'foam board' cut out of a wheelchair (symbolic see) in the other hand.
these foam boards are very light.
we even cut a slice with two large red scissors last year.
its nearly two and a half years of THAT too, being a protester.
but i wont give up.
protesting.
the cuts are biting very very harshly the disabled confraternity.
we actually do need the able bodied people to help us shout out.
its an impossible task realistically getting the disabled people en mass to the dail on this day of the lock out.
so we need the symbolics here in this shambolics of a country.

I think she was asking me a question but i look as if i didn't know the answer, i still don't.

Will you beam a big smile now and cheer up two fat ladies, at least and say 'ah for you i would do anything.  i will be creative and go to the Art & Hobby shop and buy a small or medium size foam board.'
cut out a shape of a wheelchair (symbolic) and stick it up your er, pole?
the pole of the banner FGS.
sorry for being crude at 60yrs, it takes a lot to publicize that we are in desperate times.

Soon it will be the HSE demanding not only a clapped out powered chair back, it will be the false teeth too.

now that doesn't bear thinking of, especially if you want me to smile again.