I have often been struck by the way in which my daughter and her friends, when teenagers, and indeed many teenaged girls, are so much more affectionate and open in their feelings than I remember being when I was at school. Lots of declarations of "Love you" and hugs, kisses and more hugs seem to be the order of the day when greeting each other or saying goodbye nowadays. When I was their age, we didn't even hug each other, let alone give voice to any feelings of love or affection. Why was that? Were we worried that we would be mocked for being open in our feelings? Worried that perhaps our words might be misinterpreted and our sexuality questioned? - this was the 70s, remember, when the common expectation was that everyone was heterosexual and we weren't confident enough to want to be thought of as somehow different? Whatever the reason, we just didn't do anything more openly affectionate than maybe writing "Loadsaluv" in a Christmas or birthday card, as if spelling it in a jokey way meant it couldn't possibly be viewed as anything other than a whimsical, throwaway sign-off.
Interestingly, in recent years when I have met up with, spoken to or been in written contact with my very old school friends ( from my old all girls school), I've found that my closest friends and I often sign off with "Love you", either face-to-face or in emails. Is it because we are more confident now that we can say these things without fear of being mocked or thought of as overly "touchy feely"? Or is it because, being older, we are more aware of the preciousness of good friendships? The kind of friendships formed when you are in your early teens are perhaps particularly special because we were all growing up at the same time, facing the tsunami of puberty, beginning to form our own opinions rather than believe everything our parents do, thinking of our futures and what we wanted from life and making that most tricky of transitions from childhood to young adulthood. Whatever it is, there is some bond there that seems to be pretty much unshakeable, even if we don't see each other for years, sometimes decades and which means that, as soon as we do meet up, the years just roll away and that closeness, that warm support of each other is as strong as ever. Maybe it is even stronger now, as we have all faced our own battles over the years and emerged bruised, a bit fragile but still strong in our friendships and belief that we will continue to be friends.
These feelings all manifested themselves when I met up with 11 of my old school friends a fortnight ago at a small, but perfectly formed, reunion of the class of 1970 - 76 from the Glasgow High School for Girls. We had a huge reunion two years ago, with around 50 of us meeting for a ceilidh, a few meals and a good old blether; it was such fun that we decided that we would try and have a meet-up once a year, even if it were only a few of us. I obviously couldn't make last year's meet-up, so I was particularly keen to go this year. I combined it with a sleepover at Adam's place in Carlisle, so I got to spend some time with him. As usual, I was anxious at the thought of seeing people - only three of my friends from school had seen my new face and, while my head was telling me that it would be fine and that these were all people who had been hugely supportive in their comments on Facebook and in emails to me, my heart was saying "It's going to be horrible, they'll stare at you or if they don't stare at you, the other diners in the restaurant will stare at you". I so wish I could stop these feelings surfacing every time I anticipate social events. I had hoped that, with time and given that my face does look so much better than it did at the beginning, my confidence would have given chase to the worry but it doesn't work like that. I confided in one of my friends, Fi, about how I felt and she understood exactly and, in fact, said that others had been fighting their own battles of one kind or another, so there would be nothing but support and warmth. Of course, she was right. We had a wonderful time and I even felt okay about having my photo taken, perhaps because a couple of glasses of Prosecco relaxed me to the point where my usual fears about being near a camera disappeared.
Strong, feisty, funny, caring and intelligent women - it was wonderful to spend time with this group of friends. We're already planning next year's reunion and thinking big: we're investigating renting a big house/small castle for the weekend so we can really let our hair down and not be constrained by restaurant closing times or last trains.
My trip to Glasgow was sandwiched between visits to Adam. He gave up his bedroom for me, being a dutiful son, so in return I made him and his flatmates a couple of lasagnes, a chicken casserole and a Sunday roast, being a dutiful mum! It was good to see him and spend some time with him. University life seems to suit him.
This weekend it is my favourite race - the Sodbury Slog. It's a cross-country race starting and finishing in Chipping Sodbury and of variable length, depending on which farmers have given permission for their land to be crossed, but normally around 9.6 miles. And muddy - you have no idea how muddy! There will be a stream we have to wade through which, on normal sized people, will be about knee high but on me will be about thigh high, if not higher and which we have to climb out of, hauling on a rope to help us up the slope - that will be quite a test of my dodgy shoulder! It's the most fun you can have with your clothes on and I was so disappointed to miss it last year. Once again, this is another box to be ticked in my return to normal. I've got my usual room in the hotel where a bunch of us always stay the night before and we will take over the local Italian restaurant after the race for lunch. I'm looking forward to it but with my usual sense of gnawing anxiety about how my face will be received. Yes, I know it's silly and that I will be amongst friends, but I just can't help it.
Before that, though, I have my Institute's Regional Annual Dinner at a posh hotel in London. It's a great event and you might remember that last year Neil and I were invited as guests of honour. It was quite a difficult evening for me for the reasons you all know: showing my face when it was so much worse than it is now, still suffering the after-effects of radiotherapy, unable to eat and feeling constantly on edge about how I appeared to people. This year should be so much better, but there's still that unease about my face. This year, however, I have been asked if I would like Facial Palsy UK (the charity I have been involved in setting up) to be the charity we support with our raffle over dinner, so of course I said I would and offered to say a few words about it so that people know what they're actually supporting. We're a little known charity and, let's be honest, not many of us know anything about facial palsy - I certainly didn't before I got it! Spreading the word about the charity and the condition will be invaluable so it's important that I make it personal by talking about what happened to me and how it feels to have FP. So I shall be standing up in front of over 200 people and talking about my experience. It feels a little bit daunting but it's important to do it. In a piece of good timing, there was an article on the BBC website about living with Bell's Palsy, so at least some of the people there tomorrow might know something about some aspects of facial palsy. Did any of you see it?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20206297 will give you an insight into what it's like. If you look at the photos of the woman who chronicled her recovery (Bell's Palsy is, for the vast majority of people, a temporary condition from which they will make a full recovery), my smile is now at about the stage of her photo on the extreme left of the third row down. However, I started from a much worse position than she did, as my cheek was actually hanging down on the left-hand side, so that helps me see how much improvement I have had. I'll never get back to what I was before but at least you can now see a bit of a smile on the left side of my face.
Next week, we have the press launch of our new charity so look out for coverage in newspapers and magazines after Friday 16th.
Signing off now, with my usual thanks and love to the people who help me get through every day and every week.
Showing posts with label photos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photos. Show all posts
Thursday, 8 November 2012
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Laurent Perrier and other famous names....
Why, you may ask, have I listed several well-known names as the title of this blog entry? Have patient, dear reader - all will become clear!
Let me start with Tuesday, when I completed my second volunteer stint at The Orpheus Centre. This week, I was working along with another volunteer and together we were helping one of the students complete their work experience log. You will understand that I have to be circumspect about giving names of students, so I shall refer to this student as S. S has cerebral palsy, with very little speech and spasticity in her arms and legs. She is a wheelchair user and her main method of communication is with the help of an ingenious little book which uses pictures and symbols to work from a main menu down to individual words, based on categories. S can nod or shake her head, or maybe blink, to show when we are at the right picture/symbol. By using this, we were able to help her complete assignment sheets about her work experience. While physically limited, S has an intelligence with shines through when she communicates and she can show very clearly that she understands and is interested in what is going on. Both the other volunteer and I felt that S had taught us something, as we learned to use her communication book and she was really patient with our fumbling attempts to move smoothly between the pages and reach the word she wanted! She had been skiing recently and we were looking at the photos of her on her adapted ski-chair - fantastic that it's now seen as natural that people with a disability can take part in things like skiing (and long overdue, too).
After our morning session, we ate lunch outside and some students joined us. While many of them go to their flats for lunch, some will eat in the cafeteria and there are day students who don't have accommodation to go to, so they will eat there too. I like chatting to the students and finding out more about them and what they think. They like finding out about us too, and of course, they're very interested by the fact that Amy works there and I am her mum! To be honest, I think that interests quite a few of the volunteers too :-). We had an interesting discussion about the responsibility of choosing a name for your child and whether you should choose something that is "different" or stick to tried and tested (names and/or spellings!). After lunch and self-directed study, when I helped the student I had been working with last week to complete more of her work experience record, we went to the Barn for some of the groups to demonstrate what they had been working on this term. It was a real insight into the variety of activities and the different talents and skills the students have. We learned about the enterprise work of one group, growing and selling vegetables and the different dishes they cooked with their own ingredients. We also heard some of the experiemental music group's work, which was a really diverse set of pieces, with really personal interpretations and insights. I come home from my time there with a lighter heart and a smile on my face - the students and staff are really inspirational (a word that is a bit over-used nowadays, but which I think is entirely appropriate in this instance).
Following Pilates, my lovely hairdresser came round to wash and dry my hair because yesterday (Wednesday) I went, along with T (hairdresser) and four of her friends, on T's "hen day". I can tell you that there wasn't an L plate, pretend veil or set of wings to be seen, because this hen and her chicks did something totally different to the usual "dress up, be silly, get trollied" outings that seem to be splashed all over our town centres (and tabloid papers) on a regular basis. Instead, we dressed up smartly and went to Bath on the Orient Express!! What an experience!! For sheer opulence, glamour, old-fashioned sophistication and luxurious surroundings, all wrapped up in superb service, this is second to none. All the staff, in pristine uniform and universally smiling, friendly and polite, could not do enough to make us feel special. We were shown to our seats, our jackets placed on the racks above us, heavy bags stowed away and our chairs pushed in as we sat down. Our "main man", Artur, introduced himself and said that whatever we needed, we only had to ask him - and then he proceeded to pour us each a Bellini (my kind of start to a train journey!). We were then served (silver service) a freshly-cooked and delicious brunch; smoked salmon and caviar, scrambled eggs with chives - the works. After plenty of tea and coffee, Danish pastries etc, we had the chance to view the train. It was well worth walking the length of the train and seeing the different styles of Pullman carriage - they are all named individually and have their own theme and history. Our carriage was Cygnus and there were swans incorporated into the decor, including a mosaic on the floor of the loo! One of my great heroes is Winston Churchill and I was particularly pleased that Cygnus was one of two carriages on our train which was part of his funeral train. That sounds like a strange and possibly morbid thing to be pleased about, but it made me feel some sort of connection with the great man. I get the same feeling living near his home at Chartwell - he must have walked down, or (more likely) been driven down the same roads that I use sometimes.
We arrived in Bath to blazing sunshine and were taken on a tour of the city by bus, including the famous Crescent, and then T had arranged for us to see a demonstration of glass-blowing, with the chance for us each to blow a glass bubble. That was a bit of a challenge for someone whose mouth only half-works, but I managed to create a fairly respectable, if weirdly shaped, bubble! T is the most sweetly generous and kind person and had arranged for us all to have an amount of money to spend in the glass work's gift shop, in addition to subsidising the cost of the day (I told you she was generous!) so we had fun choosing what to purchase. I chose two lovely turquoise-coloured wine goblets, as I thought they would be totally suited to sipping a pre- or post-prandial drink in the garden over the summer....assuming we have decent weather and that this current spell of warmth and sunshine isn't all we get this year!
After this, it was time to return to the station to catch the train home. That makes it sound like a daily commute, but it bears no resemblance to the London Bridge-Oxted service except for the fact that it runs on the same gauge track! A glass of champagne for each of us once we were seated set the standard for the journey and we enjoyed a superb four course meal, with wine and champagne (again, generously provided by T) and, as the wine flowed, so did the conversation! I really enjoyed meeting T's friends, all of whom I met for the first time yesterday, and I really did feel that I made some new friends and that we will keep in touch. That's a good feeling, isn't it? I like the thought that we can gather new friends as we go through life and that our friendship bank account can increase its balance. I've had a couple of debits to my friendship bank account over the last year, as I've mentioned in previous blogs, but a huge number of credits, so overall, I'm in a healthier fiscal friendship position than last March (if that makes any sense at all!).
The journey home just whizzed by - doesn't time always fly when you're enjoying yourself? - and all too soon we arrived back at Victoria and returned to normal, catching the train back to Oxted, where T's soon-to-be husband was waiting to drive us all home (he's lovely too!). I was full of my trip when I came home, babbling on to Neil and Amy, who were *enjoying* assembling a wardrobe for Amy's new bedroom....... I was very pleased that I managed to drink some champagne on the way home (I tried a sip of the very nice red wine, but it still tastes like vinegar to me), as it felt like I was just the same as everyone else, enjoying a little drink. And yes, I did enjoy it!
Today was the last meeting of my Lent group, which I have been hosting at our house for the past five weeks. It's a great little group, from across several of our local churches, so we have different denominations represented, and we have all been interested in, and respectful of, each other's views and beliefs. To close the session, we had decided to have a simple lunch together, so I made some soup and we had that with bread. Our theme today was Communion, so it seemed appropriate to "break bread" together. I have felt very blessed by my little Lent group and the trust we have all placed in each other to respect our thoughts and beliefs. They very kindly bought me and the Leader of the group a beautiful plant in a basket as a thank you (totally unnecessary, but very sweet of them) and the Leader had also bought me one, so I have beautiful colour in my sitting-room. I'd suggested that instead of people bringing things for lunch, I would provide it and people could make a contribution towards Fairtrade, which is supported by all the local churches, so we have a nice little sum to hand over to them.
I did have to take some photos today to renew my passport and I have to be honest and say that I found it difficult to look at them. I think that, like a lot of people, what I see in the mirror isn't necessarily how I look to other people and how I look in the mirror is definitely not what I see when I look at my photos! However, my passport expires soon (so does my MOT, but that doesn't need a photo!) and I do look different from my old passport photo, so have to have a new one done. If/when I end up having facial surgery and I look different again, I can always apply to change the photo at that point, but in the meantime, I have to go with how it is now. I suspect that if I had had to take these photos six, or even three, months ago, I would have been quite upset. Now I can almost shrug my shoulders and say "Well, that's how I look, so just accept it". I think that is progress.
Overall, my positive streak continues. I'm doing lots of lovely things and generally feel happy and strong. I think a lot of this is linked to this beautiful weather, so I'm not looking forward to the change this weekend...we are going to a family wedding on Saturday and, while I'm sure the bride and groom won't care about the weather, I can't help feeling that it's a bit disappointing that the temperature is going to drop by about 9 degrees and the gorgeous sunshine is going to be covered by cloud! Adam comes home from uni tomorrow, so my little family unit will be complete for a couple of weeks and I am really looking forward to that - and on that happy note, I shall sign off!
Let me start with Tuesday, when I completed my second volunteer stint at The Orpheus Centre. This week, I was working along with another volunteer and together we were helping one of the students complete their work experience log. You will understand that I have to be circumspect about giving names of students, so I shall refer to this student as S. S has cerebral palsy, with very little speech and spasticity in her arms and legs. She is a wheelchair user and her main method of communication is with the help of an ingenious little book which uses pictures and symbols to work from a main menu down to individual words, based on categories. S can nod or shake her head, or maybe blink, to show when we are at the right picture/symbol. By using this, we were able to help her complete assignment sheets about her work experience. While physically limited, S has an intelligence with shines through when she communicates and she can show very clearly that she understands and is interested in what is going on. Both the other volunteer and I felt that S had taught us something, as we learned to use her communication book and she was really patient with our fumbling attempts to move smoothly between the pages and reach the word she wanted! She had been skiing recently and we were looking at the photos of her on her adapted ski-chair - fantastic that it's now seen as natural that people with a disability can take part in things like skiing (and long overdue, too).
After our morning session, we ate lunch outside and some students joined us. While many of them go to their flats for lunch, some will eat in the cafeteria and there are day students who don't have accommodation to go to, so they will eat there too. I like chatting to the students and finding out more about them and what they think. They like finding out about us too, and of course, they're very interested by the fact that Amy works there and I am her mum! To be honest, I think that interests quite a few of the volunteers too :-). We had an interesting discussion about the responsibility of choosing a name for your child and whether you should choose something that is "different" or stick to tried and tested (names and/or spellings!). After lunch and self-directed study, when I helped the student I had been working with last week to complete more of her work experience record, we went to the Barn for some of the groups to demonstrate what they had been working on this term. It was a real insight into the variety of activities and the different talents and skills the students have. We learned about the enterprise work of one group, growing and selling vegetables and the different dishes they cooked with their own ingredients. We also heard some of the experiemental music group's work, which was a really diverse set of pieces, with really personal interpretations and insights. I come home from my time there with a lighter heart and a smile on my face - the students and staff are really inspirational (a word that is a bit over-used nowadays, but which I think is entirely appropriate in this instance).
Following Pilates, my lovely hairdresser came round to wash and dry my hair because yesterday (Wednesday) I went, along with T (hairdresser) and four of her friends, on T's "hen day". I can tell you that there wasn't an L plate, pretend veil or set of wings to be seen, because this hen and her chicks did something totally different to the usual "dress up, be silly, get trollied" outings that seem to be splashed all over our town centres (and tabloid papers) on a regular basis. Instead, we dressed up smartly and went to Bath on the Orient Express!! What an experience!! For sheer opulence, glamour, old-fashioned sophistication and luxurious surroundings, all wrapped up in superb service, this is second to none. All the staff, in pristine uniform and universally smiling, friendly and polite, could not do enough to make us feel special. We were shown to our seats, our jackets placed on the racks above us, heavy bags stowed away and our chairs pushed in as we sat down. Our "main man", Artur, introduced himself and said that whatever we needed, we only had to ask him - and then he proceeded to pour us each a Bellini (my kind of start to a train journey!). We were then served (silver service) a freshly-cooked and delicious brunch; smoked salmon and caviar, scrambled eggs with chives - the works. After plenty of tea and coffee, Danish pastries etc, we had the chance to view the train. It was well worth walking the length of the train and seeing the different styles of Pullman carriage - they are all named individually and have their own theme and history. Our carriage was Cygnus and there were swans incorporated into the decor, including a mosaic on the floor of the loo! One of my great heroes is Winston Churchill and I was particularly pleased that Cygnus was one of two carriages on our train which was part of his funeral train. That sounds like a strange and possibly morbid thing to be pleased about, but it made me feel some sort of connection with the great man. I get the same feeling living near his home at Chartwell - he must have walked down, or (more likely) been driven down the same roads that I use sometimes.
We arrived in Bath to blazing sunshine and were taken on a tour of the city by bus, including the famous Crescent, and then T had arranged for us to see a demonstration of glass-blowing, with the chance for us each to blow a glass bubble. That was a bit of a challenge for someone whose mouth only half-works, but I managed to create a fairly respectable, if weirdly shaped, bubble! T is the most sweetly generous and kind person and had arranged for us all to have an amount of money to spend in the glass work's gift shop, in addition to subsidising the cost of the day (I told you she was generous!) so we had fun choosing what to purchase. I chose two lovely turquoise-coloured wine goblets, as I thought they would be totally suited to sipping a pre- or post-prandial drink in the garden over the summer....assuming we have decent weather and that this current spell of warmth and sunshine isn't all we get this year!
After this, it was time to return to the station to catch the train home. That makes it sound like a daily commute, but it bears no resemblance to the London Bridge-Oxted service except for the fact that it runs on the same gauge track! A glass of champagne for each of us once we were seated set the standard for the journey and we enjoyed a superb four course meal, with wine and champagne (again, generously provided by T) and, as the wine flowed, so did the conversation! I really enjoyed meeting T's friends, all of whom I met for the first time yesterday, and I really did feel that I made some new friends and that we will keep in touch. That's a good feeling, isn't it? I like the thought that we can gather new friends as we go through life and that our friendship bank account can increase its balance. I've had a couple of debits to my friendship bank account over the last year, as I've mentioned in previous blogs, but a huge number of credits, so overall, I'm in a healthier fiscal friendship position than last March (if that makes any sense at all!).
The journey home just whizzed by - doesn't time always fly when you're enjoying yourself? - and all too soon we arrived back at Victoria and returned to normal, catching the train back to Oxted, where T's soon-to-be husband was waiting to drive us all home (he's lovely too!). I was full of my trip when I came home, babbling on to Neil and Amy, who were *enjoying* assembling a wardrobe for Amy's new bedroom....... I was very pleased that I managed to drink some champagne on the way home (I tried a sip of the very nice red wine, but it still tastes like vinegar to me), as it felt like I was just the same as everyone else, enjoying a little drink. And yes, I did enjoy it!
Today was the last meeting of my Lent group, which I have been hosting at our house for the past five weeks. It's a great little group, from across several of our local churches, so we have different denominations represented, and we have all been interested in, and respectful of, each other's views and beliefs. To close the session, we had decided to have a simple lunch together, so I made some soup and we had that with bread. Our theme today was Communion, so it seemed appropriate to "break bread" together. I have felt very blessed by my little Lent group and the trust we have all placed in each other to respect our thoughts and beliefs. They very kindly bought me and the Leader of the group a beautiful plant in a basket as a thank you (totally unnecessary, but very sweet of them) and the Leader had also bought me one, so I have beautiful colour in my sitting-room. I'd suggested that instead of people bringing things for lunch, I would provide it and people could make a contribution towards Fairtrade, which is supported by all the local churches, so we have a nice little sum to hand over to them.
I did have to take some photos today to renew my passport and I have to be honest and say that I found it difficult to look at them. I think that, like a lot of people, what I see in the mirror isn't necessarily how I look to other people and how I look in the mirror is definitely not what I see when I look at my photos! However, my passport expires soon (so does my MOT, but that doesn't need a photo!) and I do look different from my old passport photo, so have to have a new one done. If/when I end up having facial surgery and I look different again, I can always apply to change the photo at that point, but in the meantime, I have to go with how it is now. I suspect that if I had had to take these photos six, or even three, months ago, I would have been quite upset. Now I can almost shrug my shoulders and say "Well, that's how I look, so just accept it". I think that is progress.
Overall, my positive streak continues. I'm doing lots of lovely things and generally feel happy and strong. I think a lot of this is linked to this beautiful weather, so I'm not looking forward to the change this weekend...we are going to a family wedding on Saturday and, while I'm sure the bride and groom won't care about the weather, I can't help feeling that it's a bit disappointing that the temperature is going to drop by about 9 degrees and the gorgeous sunshine is going to be covered by cloud! Adam comes home from uni tomorrow, so my little family unit will be complete for a couple of weeks and I am really looking forward to that - and on that happy note, I shall sign off!
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Face Off....
Sometimes my life is so full of glamour that I can scarcely bring myself to believe it. Take yesterday, for example - my morning consisted of clearing the remaining detritus from Adam's bedroom so the new carpet can be laid later this week. This final clear-up operation resulted in a trip to the municipal dump and to the charity shop, where I deposited, respectively, rubbish and recyclable clothes, books and glassware. On returning home, I could no longer avoid the slightly pungent odour from the kitchen sink and had to don the Marigolds and clear the drain outside. This is a job normally undertaken by Mr S, but as it's dark when he returns home from work, I don't think it's fair to expect him to rummage around in the dark. No need to go into details, but let's just say job done.....since I was obviously in clearing/cleaning mode, I then cleaned my shamefully filthy car. I can confirm that its true colour is, in fact, silver, underneath all that grime and mud.
I felt quite grubby after all that de-griming activity, so after a long soak in the shower and a fruitless attempt to tame my increasingly independent hair, I had a quiet afternoon, with some desultory tidying up and a bit of ironing to stop me getting too comfortable on the squishy sofa. Amy and I did a legs, bums and tums class in the evening. It involved quite a bit of work with hand-weights and of course, that's sometimes quite tricky for my left shoulder, so from time to time I just used a weight in the right hand and only did the movement with my left arm. I am hoping this doesn't mean that I start to look even more lopsided, as muscles develop more on the right than on the left! Please, give me a break!
Zumba this morning, which is always invigorating and fun, even if I get totally unco-ordinated at times and end up going in the opposite direction from the rest of the class! I think what happens is that when I look at the instructor, who faces the class, I copy what she is doing but not as a mirror image. Everyone else seems to reverse what she does, so if she is moving her right leg, they move their left, but I move my right in exact imitation of her. Is it to do with being left-handed? I don't know, but I've noticed before that when I point out to anyone that they have a bit of food or dirt on their face, for example, I automatically point to the corresponding part of my face, but they always mirror where I'm pointing and start wiping the other side of their face! Maybe I am just a bit odd (no need to comment on that suggestion, by the way!).
Something else that happened this morning, which made me think - a friend commented on the fact that I was brave to link from Facebook to my charity fundraising page and a photo of my face. I was a bit puzzled by this, because I still don't feel ready to share what I look like with the wider public and would have thought very long and hard before deciding to put up a current picture. I checked and it is, in fact, an old picture of me, from about a year ago. My friend thought my eye looked a bit different in the photo and had assumed that this was a more recent photo. So, should I be upset that when I had my old face, I might still have looked a bit assymetrical? I don't think so - what purpose would that serve? I suspect, looking at the photo, that I might have been squinting into the sun, but perhaps I have allowed my memory to cultivate the belief that I used to look considerably more symmetrical and "normal" than I actually did. Maybe I don rose-tinted glasses when I look back at how I used to be and somehow imagine that I looked different from how I actually did look!
The last thing I want is for my friend to feel bad about this mistake, so I mention it here with the intention of sharing my reaction and wondering if it's reasonable: initially, I was a bit taken aback (that sounds terribly dramatic, but I don't mean it to be) but then I thought - actually, if I am going to do anything at all to help myself and other people with facial palsy, I can't be reacting as if somehow I am ashamed of how I look now and getting upset if someone thinks an old photo of me pre-surgery looks as if I have some assymetry. Isn't the point of getting involved with a charity specifically to support and educate about facial palsy to make it more acceptable to have a "different" face? To make it somehow less "shameful"?
I have now amended my fundraising page to make it clear that the photo is of the "old" me, the one whose face pretty much worked :-). Having said that, my face does still work - I can eat, drink, speak, smile (in a lopsided fashion!), blink, cry and show emotions. It just doesn't work all over in quite the way it used to.
One day soon, I think I will be ready to show a photo of how I am now. Those of you who have seen me know what I look like - if you haven't seen me since late 2011, I hope you would notice an improvement. For those who haven't yet seen my new face, when I do post a photo, you will get more of an idea of how it's changed. I just need to be brave enough to say "Look, this is how I am now".
Soon.
I felt quite grubby after all that de-griming activity, so after a long soak in the shower and a fruitless attempt to tame my increasingly independent hair, I had a quiet afternoon, with some desultory tidying up and a bit of ironing to stop me getting too comfortable on the squishy sofa. Amy and I did a legs, bums and tums class in the evening. It involved quite a bit of work with hand-weights and of course, that's sometimes quite tricky for my left shoulder, so from time to time I just used a weight in the right hand and only did the movement with my left arm. I am hoping this doesn't mean that I start to look even more lopsided, as muscles develop more on the right than on the left! Please, give me a break!
Zumba this morning, which is always invigorating and fun, even if I get totally unco-ordinated at times and end up going in the opposite direction from the rest of the class! I think what happens is that when I look at the instructor, who faces the class, I copy what she is doing but not as a mirror image. Everyone else seems to reverse what she does, so if she is moving her right leg, they move their left, but I move my right in exact imitation of her. Is it to do with being left-handed? I don't know, but I've noticed before that when I point out to anyone that they have a bit of food or dirt on their face, for example, I automatically point to the corresponding part of my face, but they always mirror where I'm pointing and start wiping the other side of their face! Maybe I am just a bit odd (no need to comment on that suggestion, by the way!).
Something else that happened this morning, which made me think - a friend commented on the fact that I was brave to link from Facebook to my charity fundraising page and a photo of my face. I was a bit puzzled by this, because I still don't feel ready to share what I look like with the wider public and would have thought very long and hard before deciding to put up a current picture. I checked and it is, in fact, an old picture of me, from about a year ago. My friend thought my eye looked a bit different in the photo and had assumed that this was a more recent photo. So, should I be upset that when I had my old face, I might still have looked a bit assymetrical? I don't think so - what purpose would that serve? I suspect, looking at the photo, that I might have been squinting into the sun, but perhaps I have allowed my memory to cultivate the belief that I used to look considerably more symmetrical and "normal" than I actually did. Maybe I don rose-tinted glasses when I look back at how I used to be and somehow imagine that I looked different from how I actually did look!
The last thing I want is for my friend to feel bad about this mistake, so I mention it here with the intention of sharing my reaction and wondering if it's reasonable: initially, I was a bit taken aback (that sounds terribly dramatic, but I don't mean it to be) but then I thought - actually, if I am going to do anything at all to help myself and other people with facial palsy, I can't be reacting as if somehow I am ashamed of how I look now and getting upset if someone thinks an old photo of me pre-surgery looks as if I have some assymetry. Isn't the point of getting involved with a charity specifically to support and educate about facial palsy to make it more acceptable to have a "different" face? To make it somehow less "shameful"?
I have now amended my fundraising page to make it clear that the photo is of the "old" me, the one whose face pretty much worked :-). Having said that, my face does still work - I can eat, drink, speak, smile (in a lopsided fashion!), blink, cry and show emotions. It just doesn't work all over in quite the way it used to.
One day soon, I think I will be ready to show a photo of how I am now. Those of you who have seen me know what I look like - if you haven't seen me since late 2011, I hope you would notice an improvement. For those who haven't yet seen my new face, when I do post a photo, you will get more of an idea of how it's changed. I just need to be brave enough to say "Look, this is how I am now".
Soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)