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Bang goes the neurons and The Cataclysmic ‘Cerebral Palsy’ twitch.
Harry Newton • Aug 27, 2019
As part of my quest for increasing disability awareness, I thought it was best for me to describe my condition and how it affects me on a daily basis, please don’t worry, no electricity was created in the making of this blog! In a nutshell, Cerebral Palsy is a term used to cover several neurological conditions.
These conditions are caused before, during or shortly after birth as a result of injury to the brain due to any of the following reasons:
• Limited or interrupted oxygen supply to the brain
• A bleed within the baby's brain
• A premature or difficult birth process
• The mother catching an infection whilst pregnant
• Changes in genes which affect the development of the brain
Cerebral Palsy can affect muscle control, coordination and tone, reflexes, posture and balance. Often a person with Cerebral Palsy will display signs of the condition, but the effects can vary greatly from person to person. Just to give you some facts, In the UK it is estimated that, 111,000 people have Cerebral Palsy in the UK, with 1 in 400 babies born with a type of cerebral palsy (The Office for National Statistics). So if you think about it, that is the equivalent of potentially over 100,000 wheelchair ‘Wildebeests’ users, (as like to call my chair) all zipping and zooming around the UK. With a top speed of 7.5 mph the presenters of BBC ‘Top Gear’ would be jealous of and as a collective we really would be a force to be reckoned with on the F1 circuit!
The Cataclysmic ‘Cerebral Palsy’ twitch.
My only explanation about this twitch, spasm or jerk feels like my neutrons are leaping out of my skin and can only be closely imaginable to sticking your fingers in a an electrical socket (please don't try this at home!) We all must have remembered and laughed during those Tom & Jerry cartoons, when Tom stupidly puts his fingers in a plug socket, like Tom I'm a ‘whizz bang wallop‘, and ‘boom’ back in the room. If I could bottle it up I would and funnily enough in some social events, the twitching of my full body often results with me throwing half my pint over my head!! So to the fellow sports or music fans, I can be seemingly viewed as being a little bit on the jolly side, however to me, the frequent visitation of my Cataclysmic ‘Cerebral Palsy’ twitch is just another one of my foibles and idiosyncrasies.