Blissfully captured.

For mental health awareness day tomorrow, a little story of how sometimes you have to face what scares you, until it doesn't anymore (but only when you are ready)

These photographs sat in a drawer in the spare room for ten years. This was my first cuddle with Elin without tubes and wires, when she was still in ICU following her birth, but had finally come off the ventilator. I was 26 years old and petrified. She was still very, very poorly. Paul took them because he noticed the July sunlight was shining through her cot-side window and the amateur photographer in him realised it would make a nice shot. It was a proper camera with a film and we had to wait for these to be developed. That seems crazy now. But, I'm glad they weren't taken on an iPhone. I really treasure that memory, of the photo's being taken on that big camera with the flash. It felt, for the most fleeting of seconds, like we were a normal family.

However, for the longest time, I could not display these newborn pictures. I just could not look at them without remembering the utter horror and trauma of the moments before they were taken and the moments that followed, and continued to follow for months (years). I loved the photo's, but I hated them too. They represent such a juxtaposition of hope and despair, of elation and devastation, of love and fear, of grief and gratitude.
Then Elin turned ten and something in me changed. Ten years is a milestone. It's a long time to be hanging on to trauma, denying a happy memory for fear of unearthing a million unhappy ones. For a while now, things had been feeling so much better. Elin has been doing amazingly well. Horrendous memories were definitely fading. I began to volunteer on the Special Care Baby Unit where Elin had been born, through the neonatal charity "Bliss". I had been Chairperson of the charity attached to the unit, Cherish, for many years by now, but that rarely involved visiting the unit itself and almost only ever involved conversing with parents who had long since left the unit with a recovering baby. This volunteering was different, it was to consist of going to the unit weekly and speaking with parents who were once in my position, right at the start of their journey as parents, some with very sick babies. It's providing an understanding ear to them in a harrowing time and hopefully helping them through, just by being someone there who knows exactly how they feel and has come out the other side. When I did my training with Bliss, I wondered if I would be able to carry out the role effectively, without re-visiting my own terrible memories of the first few weeks of Elin's life and letting them consume me again. I wondered if being there, immersed in the stories of others might set my mental health recovery from what happened to Elin (and I am always still in recovery) back a little. But somehow deep down in my gut I knew I was ready and that it was the right time to take on something like this. I had an urge to support other parents by doing something I think I would have benefitted from at the time we were on the unit all those years ago (though it has to be said the support from the amazing nursing team at this time was incredible. I never got over how wise them seemed, how easily they could comfort me. Nurses by trade, unpaid counsellors on the side)
The result has been one of the most rewarding things I have done. I've been volunteering for almost twelve months now and I have loved it. I think I was worried I may be transported back to one of the most difficult periods of my life -a period where we realised life would never be the same again, a period that was the start of 11 years of trying to come to terms with her ultimate diagnosis- in trying to help other parents. In fact, I couldn't have been more wrong. It's been so fantastically positive an experience. It's hard to explain, but it has normalised our time on the unit for me. I have seen incredible, amazing parents go through unthinkable things in the past few months. They have never failed to astound me with their strength, not a single one. I have been utterly inspired by them. These things happen and they happen again and again. It's life and it's how we deal with it that counts, because what else is there? It isn't, and was never, just me. We are not alone. The feelings I had, which I had been so scared to re-visit in keeping the photo's in the drawer, have been echoed back to me scores of times over the past twelve months in my role. It brought me a clarity and sense of peace I never considered when I thought about volunteering.
After I had been visiting the unit for a while, and ten years after Elin's birth,  I came across these photo's when searching for something else. Suddenly, I was really cross with myself for hiding them away. I made a snap decision to frame them and put them on Elin's bedroom wall. Now I look at them every day, we look at them together. Not once have I felt my heart pounding, or my stomach sickening, or my palms getting sweaty. I just feel joy. It's blissful to feel freed of the negativity that I once attached to these photographs so lovingly captured by Elin's Daddy. It took a long time, but I understand now that I had to be ready. It turns out that facing my fears, actively putting myself back into the environment that initially held such difficult memories for me and hopefully providing a little support to those trying to heal themselves, has helped heal me a little too.

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood"

Marie Curie.

Mental Health Awareness Day October 10th 2019.

Hurricane Dystonia

The calm before the 'storm'..........

Every so often, Elin's dystonia will really get me down. Most of the time you just manage it as best you can and take the good times as and when they come. Sometimes, though,  it's impossible not to get a bit overwhelmed by the situation. Usually this happens after a really good spell, so you are reminded of how much easier life is when Elin's dystonia isn't bothering her and she will just sit happily in a chair. It doesn't feel like a lot to ask and yet the simple fact that Elin can quite often find it impossible to sit in her wheelchair has made, and continues to make, life really agonisingly difficult sometimes.
It's not the disability, ironically. Aside from the lifting, you can get really used to life when someone in your family has wheels where their feet should be. We have hoists, we have an adapted car, most places we would want to visit these days are disability-friendly. But show me a dystonic girl and your world can suddenly feel very small, since there is a Catch 22 of a 9 year old child who can't walk but can't sit in a wheelchair either.
It's heartbreaking for Elin, she loves to be out and about and nosey and sociable - when she is dystonia free. But if it has hold of her doing almost anything/going anywhere is either a huge mission or just impossible, especially now she is so big. She needs to be lifted in and out of her chair every five minutes. It's hard.
I get asked a lot what dystonia does to Elin when I'm trying to explain it. I think until you see it, it's hard to imagine. Elin will start by pushing down through her feet onto her chair footplate. Her head will start whipping from side to side. Her arms will fling out, repeatedly. Then the all-over body shaking, red face and gasping for breath will start. It looks pretty much like a full on epileptic seizure . Absolutely awful to see and god only knows how it feels for poor Elin. I would upload a video but that would feel like an invasion of Elin's privacy and besides you probably wouldn't want to see it. Needless to say when it takes hold there's no stopping it until you take her out of the chair, at which point thankfully she will relax. It's just that taking her out of her chair is no longer as easy as it once was- my bad back is testament to that. However the worst part has to be the car journeys.
Travelling anywhere when Elin is in the grip of dystonia becomes traumatic, stressful and upsetting. This weekend we were blessed with rare bank holiday sunshine and we decided to go the beach (given that we can never go far we are incredibly lucky to live an hour from the North Wales coast- it's so stunning) Elin's dystonia had actually been amazing all week, following a few awful weeks, so we thought we were winning. She was great on the way there, I couldn't wait to get her out and go for a gorgeous roll along the seafront. But for whatever reason (and there is no reason, or pattern, as far as any of us can tell) she just stopped being able to sit shortly before we arrived. Thoughts of walks were abandoned as we had to stop every few seconds to re-position Elin and make sure she wasn't damaging herself. In the end I found a bench where I could lift her out and Paul went back for the car to drive the rest of the length of the prom to get to the beach.  We parked her chair as close to the beach as we could then carried her down and quickly got her onto a picnic blanket, which thankfully she was able to relax and enjoy before eventually having to concede to the dreaded and traumatic journey home. I sit next to Elin's wheelchair in the back of the car now so I can attempt to comfort her. Nothing much works apart from bending her forward, so she's leaning right over her own knees, with my arm stretched around her back as I try and twist sideways to do so from my seat belted position. Not fun.
In June we finally have a meeting with the UK's leading expert on dystonia, Dr Lin at the Evalina Children's Hospital in London. It is a great irony that we have to travel for hours to get some advice, when travelling for hours is the one thing Elin can't do, but we really feel we need an opinion from someone who may have seen it in this particular form before. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
I share this post with tags in the hope it will reach someone else on the wonderful world wide web who is going through this. Most of the dystonia I have come across so far has not taken this form of being triggered by seating or standing frames (and yes we have tried every seat and wheelchair under the sun). If you're reading this and it sounds familiar please get in touch, I feel your pain!
In the meantime until we find a cure, if there even is one, we just have to continue to 'manage', which now unfortunately has started to mean thinking very carefully about where we are able to go and what we are able to do as a family more than ever following her growth spurt. I find myself struggling to say I wish Elin wasn't disabled because it feels like a betrayal of who she is, it feels like saying I want her to be someone else somehow, that she's not good enough- and that feels wrong. But I do wish with all my heart that she didn't have dystonia, right now I'd give my right arm to be able to go on a simple day out without it turning into a nightmare of epic proportion and without the three of us ending up exhausted and upset. It would be awesome to go for a walk without having to get a babysitter, to just do some really mundane ordinary stuff as a family together. It's like being hit by a Tornado, you have no idea it's coming you just have to hope for the best, wait for it to pass and deal with the results in it's wake. Probably no coincidence that bad attacks of dystonia are known as 'Dystonic Storms'. To go for a stroll on a bank holiday Monday instead of being house -bound (thank god for the garden) would be amazing. It doesn't feel like a lot to ask really, given what Elin deals with every single day with a smile on her face. She just deserves better. I hope the great and powerful Wizard Dr Lin can help and our trip in June isn't wasted! Because getting out and about and taking Elin to lovely places along with the rest of the world on a sunny bank holiday is something which I, in the words of Dorothy Gale, think I miss most of all.

On the plus side I must be developing arm muscle tone to rival Venus and Serena- no need for a gym membership when you have a dystonic nine year old! Every cloud. 

Have a lovely week, folks.

xxxxx