quadriplegic

Happy New Year!!!

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What were your highlights in 2015?

What are you looking forward to over the next 12 months? Apart from the Puffin Magic Circus Ball on 19 March!!!

As individuals and as a society we are in constant flux between reflecting and learning from the past and planning and prophecising about the future.

For me, facing my fear of sit skiing, stand-up fly fishing, joining the management committee of an incredible new resort for spinal cord injured individuals, called Sargood, and the growing success and impact of Empower Golf were standouts of the last 6 months. Understanding that one must be conscious of “stopping something old” to “start something new”, will be key to a successful year ahead.

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A UK Trip for the Ages

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If you are wondering about the radio silence, I have just returned from a fantastic month away in the UK with Sarah.

I don’t know quite where to start with so many highlights. For once, we managed the perfect combination of downtime in the countryside and city highlife, quality time with old friends/family and larger nights out, experimenting with new activities and venues and enjoying our old favourites, mediating craziness with culture and even spent some memorable one-on-one time.

Firstly, catching up with Sarah’s family (and their many animals) and exporting some of Australia’s finest barbecuing skills… Mr Macdonald even borrowed my ‘off-road’ scooter as a joy-riding-alcohol-trolley, normally reserved for grannies and daytrippers. (more…)

James’ News & Progress – 3 April 2009

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A couple of weeks back, thinking it would buy me some time, I promised my grandmother, Cle, that if she was victorious during one of her mid-week bridge games, I would allow myself to be lured back to the table. I should have known better as last Sunday she turned up at the house with a pack of cards and a big grin on her face exclaiming that she had cleaned up that week at the Hunters Hill Bridge Club winning two out of three appearances and was ready for a long-awaited rematch. The afternoon progressed, heavily assisted for me by a new wooden cardholder designed and made by Dad (with my occupational therapist in mind of course!) which allowed me to manoeuvre the cards in and out of the board with growing success. Although the play was very slow as I tried to manipulate the cards, for the bridge aficionados, we did manage a successful six no trumps bid in the second hand, which was a nice way to enter the world of cards again. (more…)

James’ News & Progress – 13 March 2009

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On the medical front, we have had a very positive week with two encouraging trips to Royal North Shore resulting in another reduction in daily medications. James is now pretty much drug-free, apart from anti-spasm drugs which are very common for spinal cord injury patients and a constant frustration when working in the gym, trying to sleep or working with therapists. There are mixed opinions on the pros and cons of spasticity, as although spasms build muscle tone and activate movement, they can give a spinal cord trauma victim false hope given their involuntary nature. (more…)

James’ News & Progress – 13 February 2009

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Here is the first of our weekly updates on James’ progress. Watch out for new updates every Saturday.

Every week James seems to have some sort of testing and this week we went into the Hand Clinic at Royal North Shore for an assessment and to try and gain some knowledge on how we can get some finger movement and strength into James’ hands. He also had tests on other limbs and currently, his injury under the ASIA (American Spinal Injury Association) is C4-C5 complete but we are hoping for an improvement in this assessment in the coming weeks. (more…)