The Paralympics And What They Now Mean To Me

Perhaps like many people, I haven't thought much about the Paralympics, and what they mean.

I've just today watched a very moving film from the BBC iplayer, entitled The Best Of Men.

I haven't been so moved by a film For ages.

It tells the story of how the Paralympic games came into existence, but more importantly it tells of how attitudes to the care of a spinal injury patients were transformed in the Forties and Fifties, and how that transformation gave back the desire for severely disabled patients not only to live once more, but to strive to achieve beyond the expectations of the able bodied.

Perhaps it is predictable that I should be moved by such an extraordinary film, because I am myself severely disabled, not by a spinal cord injury. But by the degenerative condition multiple sclerosis.

In other words, I will never be an Olympian in physical terms, as my upper body strength is negligible, and my muscles are severely wasted throughout my body, thanks to the way in which my nervous system has been attacked by my own immune system.

But I am fortunate in that the muscles that enable me to speak have been unaffected, and if there were a competition that involved public speaking, I would be an entrant.

In fact, the fact that I am unable to work has given me the leisure to be able to use my voice and voice activated software to continue what has perhaps been my most important leisure pursuit.

I have published two volumes of my own poetry, and a book of short stories, some of which were written when I still had the ability to walk, and took it so for granted.

But many of which have been written when I have been perhaps as written off as those first patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital where attitudes were so transformed by one particular doctor, who was himself a refugee from his own country because of the war that had created so many of the patients that he came to restore a sense of dignity and purpose to.

There have been times for myself when I have not considered myself to have a future.

There is no doubt that it is not straightforward to find a new sense of self from the wreckage of a life, whatever the cause, whether an accident or debilitating illness.

But I would heartily recommend this film to anyone, wherever they come from, if they have access to the Internet and can watch BBC programmes online.

I will certainly be watching the Paralympics with a changed perspective after having seen The Best Of Men, and perhaps too it will make me think differently about the way in which I see myself.

The fact that I can still make use of technology to access a world that 20 years ago nobody would have dreamed existed, means that I have plenty of reason to contemplate a future that is as distant and mysterious and yet achievable as any dreams I may have had when I was young and knew nothing of the condition that has so transformed my life.