Monday, March 28, 2005

the air conditioner on again

They have the air conditioner on againin my office and it is cold as hell. I have a spinal cord injury, (c-4-c-5 spiral fracture) 1966. So, I have been living with the effect for nearly 40 years now. I am bunged up from my shoulders down, paralyzed not as bad as most C-4’s I know. The late great Superman, was a little higher then my lesion, he was a “floating head, I can move my arms, and legs to some degree. Actually, I am damn lucky. I am nearly totally independent. I used to be totally independent but I can no longer get myself back into the wheelchair should I fall out; which is happening more and more these days. About three times last. I can live with three times, more then three times and I begin to get worried. Anyway the point I am laboring to make is that I have a lot of spasticity from the spinal cord injury. This spasticity gets markedly worse when I get cold. When I am cold for an extended period of time my muscles tend to seize up a little making my movements jerky and somewhat painful. So, here I am sitting in my back office, wearing my felt poncho cursing who ever turned on the stupid air conditioning and waiting for five-o-clock. The rest of the staff think I look crazy but I don’t care if my black poncho keeps me warm and somewhat comfortable that’s OK with me.

1 comment:

riptideselkie said...

don't worry, i get cold easily and i have no spinal injury. don't know why, must be genetic. Anyway, some days at work i live in my little blue poncho. it's warm and it keeps me happy. That's all that matters to me. there seems to always to be a couple of us cold natured people in the office. you can tell who we are because we have blankets at our desks. Have you thought about keeping one of those at the office? Maybe that would get them to think a little harder about turning the air up to full blast.