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Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth

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Growth can be defined as an increase in some quantity over time.  The quantity can be physical (e.g. growth in height, growth in the amount of money possessed).  However it can also be abstract or metaphorical (e.g. a growth in one’s personality or psychological development.  And it is the former that has based the inspiration for this week’s photograph:

 

 

This was a picture taken at the recent ‘Life 4 Living’ Party and the subject of a recent post entitled ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like…A High Ceiling’ .  As you may remember the party took place in a large hall with a high ceiling, which as you may recall is one of my main trigger for severe attacks of vertigo.

Before, my diagnosis my first instinct would have been much more leaned towards the flight part of the flight or fight response and would have left the room.  However on thus occasion and whether it is now due to the knowledge of why I was feeling the way I did and why, I managed to stay at the party for the entire 3 hours despite the vertigo and nausea!  That’s what I call growth!!

What does growth look like to you?

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How do you solve a problem like…a high ceiling?

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Sorry for the lack of an update this week – truth be told, I haven’t had the greatest weeks with most of it spent lying on the sofa with the comfort of a quilt and watching endless hours of television (or at least trying to!!) feeling particularly dizzy, weak, nauseous and with frequent episodes of the ‘room spinning’ motion.

It started Wednesday evening and I believe that the deterioration in my condition was due to the afternoon I spent at ‘Life 4 Living’; a local group I attend every week which promotes enjoyment, positivity and friendship.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my time at the group, and is something that I really look forward to, however, this week we had a local singer coming to the group to perform and so we left the confines of our usual room to conduct the session in the Day Centre’s Main Hall.

Now as I may have mentioned before that one of the triggers that seem to affect me much more than anything else are high ceilings.  The very first dizzy spell I experienced was in a DIY Superstore with vast ceilings and being in a place with high ceilings can bring on an attack of vertigo, causing my vision to become out of focus, balance becomes even more unsteady.  I have no idea why these places affect me so much but they just do – if anyone knows any such explanation I would love to know!!  The ceiling wasn’t particularly, much lower than what you would find to expect in a superstore for example, but as there was dips within the ceiling itself – progressing from higher to lower and so on just threw me for a loop – as if it was too much visual stimuli for my brain to process!

Unfortunately for me everywhere and every new store that is opening up seems to be big vast and open as well as the problematic high ceilings – as if the world I live in now no longer is fit for me, a lot of places coming out-of-bounds for me and my condition, nowhere being accessible for people ‘like’ me.

My Nemesis!

We had prior warning to the change of venue and knew what it was like in there beforehand so I was able to bring my Mum along for support and to help me if taken unwell. On a positive note, I did manage to stay in the hall for the entire group session (close to 3 hours) but even so I uncomfortable and unwell the entire time, and my balance was really bad also – thank god Mum was there to get me drinks and to help me get my food from the buffet.  As much as I did want there, I just wanted to enjoy myself with my Mum whom I do not get to go out with anymore on account with the severity of my symptoms as well as the awkwardness of spending a long amount of time out causes due to the weakness in my legs, and Mum was also looking forward to seeing the singer perform so didn’t want to spoil it for her.

The most embarrassing part came towards the end of the afternoon when coming to leave my legs seized up on me causing me to crash to the floor!! But still a good time was had by all!

And since then, I have really gone downhill, legs weak I have hardly been able to stand and generally feeling weak and lethargic – as if those three short hours just took everything out of me.  So here’s to a quick recovery in time for volunteering Monday and especially to the next meeting of ‘Life 4 Living’!!

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HAWMC Day 21: Health Madlib Poem

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Welcome all again.  It’s a bright, beautiful sunny morning outside, on the 21st April.  And time for a new post for the WEGO Health ’30 Days, 30 Posts’ Challenge.  The prompt for today is as follows:

Health Madlib Poem…Go to http://languageisavirus.com/cgi-bin/madlibs.pi and fill in the parts of the speech and the site will generate a poem for you.  Feel free to post the madlib or edit it to make it better…

I have to admit that I hadn’t a clue what a Madlib was, which was where Google came in very handy.  Apparently, Mad Libs is a word game frequently played at parties and is especially popular among children.  Mad Libs (from ad lib meaning a spontaneous improvisation) is a phrasal template word game where one player prompts another for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story, usually with funny results.        Information taken from Wikipedia.

In this particular challenge, the website given in the prompt asked me to provide words such as nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives and then generated a poem using the words I provided.  The following in a mixture of my words and those of e.e cummings, based upon his poem entitled ‘somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond’.

 Here is my Health Madlib Poem:

alone i always fall, fall almost broken

any room, your lesion lies there invisible

in your most inner brain are things which seclude me,

or which i cannot see because they are too deep

 

your trivial look quickly will turn me

though i have looked at their lights

you feel suddenly dizzy  by dizzy myself as flashes brightly

(grasping tables, falling) her weakness obvious

 

or if your wish be to catch me, i and

my legs will stand very shakily, uncontrollably

as when the scene of this world spins

the vertigo increases intensely

 

nothing which we are to do in this circumstance can

the power of your intense movement; whose strength

compels me with the nausea of its disturbance,

legs buckling and crumbling with each tremor

 

(i do not understand what it is about you that causes)

and reacts; only something in me damaged

the stem of your brain is scarred than all others

falling, not even the crutch, has such fast reflexes

And here is the original e.e. cummings poem of ‘somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond’:

 

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

 

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

 

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

 

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

 

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

So, what do you all think?  Please leave a comment below, love to know your thoughts!  Have you created your own madlib poem, please share them, would love to read them.

Until Tomorrow…

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HAWMC Day 16: Pinboard

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Welcome to another post for the 30 Days, 30 Posts Challenge as part of the WEGO Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. It’s Day 16 and today’s prompt says the following:

Pinboard…Create a pinterest board for your health focus. Pin 3 things. What did you pin? Share the images in a post and explain why you chose them

For those who are not aware, Pinterest is a ‘virtual pinboard’ and allows users to organise and share photographs that they love or inspire them. Users are also able to browse pinboards created by others who share they particular interests and a great way for discovering new ideas. Pinboards allow users to be able to plan special occasions such as weddings, or ideas for decorating the home or for new recipes.

I have signed up to Pinterest and my username is serenebutterfly for those wanting to have a look at my personal pinboard

This is a tough assignment today – my condition is, as already mentioned is invisible, so finding images that reflect my health focus. This is where Google is going to come in very handy!!

1.

Image: http://reference.medscape.com/features/slideshow/vertigo

The above image shows an MRI, the scan on the left depicts a brain stem lesion which is exactly what is wrong with me. However, it is not necessarily located in the same place as mine, however I thought that this image best showed what was going inside my head – the best way to show my health focus which is obviously my condition. Using an image of an MRI is the best way to illustrate what my specific health focus is – my condition…

2.

Image: http://pinterest.com/pin/126593439495125404/ (Courtesy of Kyle Mills)

Okay so could not find a picture that really defines ‘dizziness’ adequately, I mean it is something that you feel happen to you, and cannot tell if someone is dizzy by looking at them. However, this picture does show what my view is like when experiencing an episode of vertigo – as if the world is moving, and also depicts what my vision is like, quite effectively during these attacks as I very often have visual experiences – things become very out of focus and blurred and even double vision. Excellently portrayed by the image as you are able to see two images of the woman’s face. Closest picture I could find which really summed up the experience of vertigo and visual disturbances…

3.

Okay, so this is the third and final image I have chosen. Again my condition or the symptoms that I experience are not visible, and therefore I have to use images that are a metaphor for what I face on a daily basis. The constant dizziness, is as if my world is always unbalanced, which is portrayed by the rocks being on a tilt. Also, one can never tell when one of the rocks is going to fall off and fall to the ground…This also depicts, in a really clever way the problems with my legs as just like the rocks, I never know when my legs are going to collapse, causing me to fall to the ground…

I thought I would share one more with you, as it is something that made me smile when I found it on Pinterest and something that I can very well relate to because of all the falls that I endure on a daily basis:

So, what do you all think of the images that I have chosen to represent my health focus? Are there any other images that I could have used to represent my condition? If you had to create a pinboard for yourself, what images would you pin?

As always love to hear your views, comments or suggestions…

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HAWMC Day 5: Ekphrasis Post

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Another day has come upon us…so it’s now the fifth day of the WEGO Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. Th prompt for today reads:

Ekphrasis Post…Go to flickr.com/explore and write a post inspired by the image. Can you link it to your health focus? Don’t forget to post the image!

Ekphrasis is defined as ‘a description of a visual work of art…and is considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium dy defining and describing its essence and form’.

Anyway, this is the image that flickr chose for me:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/star_gazer_32/2052442753/

For copyright reasons, I was unable to upload the photograph to the post itself.

So, how would this image relate to my health condition? Well for one, this image really sums up my world how it looks whilst I am dealing with the visual disturbances in my daily life – everything out of focus, and blurred, so not being able to clearly make out objects, people or places, which when they come on can be frightening indeed…

Also, it is ironic that the image that appeared was of a carousel – they obviously go round and round, often producing feeling of dizziness and nausea. Two symptoms which I suffer from every day!!  Often, after coming off a carousel or other rides such as these, often leave your legs feeling like jelly, which is a sensation similar I experience everyday with my legs which continuously feels weak and wobbly, as if at any moment I will fall as if my legs are unable to support my weight.

Living with a chronic illness can in many ways be symbolised by the movement of the carousel horses, like the one in the image – up, and down, up and down. Many chronic illnesses, or illnesses which cannot be seen are very often fluctuating condition, so that one day you may be feel on top of the world, have lots of energy… whilst the next day you may be at rock bottom, feeling incredibly unwell, lethargic.

The colours and the lights are that are depicted in the image are problematic for me – strobe lights like these often being on episodes of vertigo and visual disturbances when I am faced with them. So being in the location of the carousel from the picture would probably leave me feeling very unwell indeed!!

The image has evoked a feeling of deja vu in me, as if the image itself describes my everyday life – the spinning of the carousel itself depicting the continuous dizziness and episodes of vertigo.  The image being blurred and out of focus depicting the visual disturbances which come and go throughout the day.  And the feelings after coming off a carousel reflecting the jelly like feelings in my legs and the weakness in them.

Well, that’s all folks.  I hope you enjoyed the post – I myself have found this particular prompt very difficult indeed, and not sure that I have done well with it all.  If you have any comments or thoughts, please feel free to share them, i would love to know what you all think

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