Supportive (and strange) phone calls

No, no, no, not that kind of strange phone call - just unusual ones from friends - oh yes and before insults are taken I said unusual from friends - I wouldn't accuse my friends of being strange or unusual (well, not in public anyway). Am I going off the point again?

My friends are brilliant - I guess everyone says that about their friends too but this is my lot and I like them which is what's important. Some of them (despite having known me for years) don't know me very well at all. This is my fault, because although I talk a lot (too much some would say), I don't always tell them how I am. I think many people who live with pretty much constant pain don't want to be going on about it constantly. It's depressing and besides which I don't know why anyone else would be interested. You hear so much about people with scoliosis wearing clothes to hide their rib hump and standing in a certain way in order to look (and feel) like everyone else and you realise that you do that yourself a lot of the time. Heck, it was years before I told many of my friends that I had Spina Bifida and I know lots of people who thought I limped just because I have one leg a bit shorter than the other - and I never enlightened them. For certain, it's not many of them who know all about the 'wonky wiring' in my legs which has resulted in an inability to either feel my feet or know what they are doing most of the time! * (It would be nice if they did something useful while I wasn't paying attention but unfortunately all they do is hang around at the bottom of my legs...)

I dunno if we try and hide these things so we fit in, or just so we don't have to answer too many questions ("Mummy, what's wrong with that lady's back?"). Or even if it's a coping mechanism - if I ignore it and hope it goes away, then maybe I can get on with something interesting in my life? I really don't know, but I know from other people that I am not alone.

Anyway (have you noticed how much I use that word), because I have spent so long hiding my back and my aches and pains from the world I am now in an odd situation. I am having major spinal surgery - my friends know this. What they don't know is why I am having it when I seem to cope so well - "I didn't realise things were so bad" one of them said. Well, I guess that's the point really - I didn't want them to know because I didn't want to be different. Maybe if I had, this wouldn't be such a shock for them - it sure has resulted in some strange phone calls...

*I guess you all do now as Ive just gone and told the whole world....