Tough Times Ahead
By Mike Taylor | August 11, 2008
I had tough times ahead of me. Work was going well, it took my attention away from the situation with my girlfriend to a degree. I sold my apartment and bought a new one; a 2 bedroom on the ground floor with a garden. Not too far from me and not too far from the Lido. OK, let me tell you a little bit about me and the wheelchair. First of all, I didn’t want it but needed it. And these bloody things are expensive if you want something that is aesthetically pleasing which of course, I did. In my new flat alone and having seen wheelchair athletes putting wheelies in their chairs, I thought “oh, that looks easy”.
Have any of you tried to put a wheely on your bike? If you have, no doubt you’ve discovered what the point of no return means. You pull the front wheel up and when it’s too much, no problem, you step off. Now in my wheelchair and trying to pull the 2 front wheels up and resting on the back 2, I discovered the true meaning of the point of no return. In the chair, the point of no return is just that, the point of no return. The only thing that stops you is your head and the floor behind you. Shit! That hurt.
Having a positive attitude and great determination, as I was now on the floor, I dragged myself to the couch, pulled myself up and got back in the chair. Then I tried again. The first couple of times were good and yes, you guessed, I was off to the point of no return again. This time it f—ing hurt. That was it. For the time being I was going to keep on 4 wheels.
I stupidly and stubbornly tried to stay away from the disability world. But if I wanted to move forward in my life which I did and will, I began to embrace it.
Talking of 4 wheels, you’re probably wondering if I had a car. Yes I did, under a scheme called motorbility which they have in the UK. It was set up to help disabled people become mobile.
I got a brand new Fiat Punto, an automatic car so that hand controls could be fitted easily. I could drive before but I’d never used hand controls. I picked the car up, the brand new Fiat Punto, it was rush hour in London and because I had never used hand controls before, I have never been so glad to have that car back home in one piece!
Topics: How it Began | No Comments »
Being in a Wheelchair is interesting…
By Mike Taylor | August 9, 2008
Now being in a wheelchair creates other problems as I’m about to learn very quickly.
Going for a pee was a bit of a problem. So I started using a red pee bottle that I kept in a bag behind my chair. It was incredibly useful when stuck in traffic and had the urge. That’s another thing about my M.S., I drink a lot of water and pee a lot. I drink a lot of water because now I’ve gone passed the denial stage of M.S. and I want to take care of my body, not just externally with the swimming but internally too.
It was amazing once people knew about me having M.S., how many people seemingly knew what I should be taking to make myself better.
Here are just a few of their suggestions:
Beesting therapy (i.e. sting yourself with bees, snake venom syrum, goat syrum therapy) and to drink half a pint of your own pee. You’ll be pleased to know that I did none of the above. A homeopath was recommeded to me, a guy called Julian Kenyan.
Upon first meeting him he initially did a vega test. That’s vega test checks for food intolerances, foods to avoid. These included sugars, dairy, down at the bottom of that list was something I didn’t want to see and that was alcohol.
Being an Englishman, I love alcohol. I tried not drinking for a month, this was a long month. Especially when you are out for dinner and the wine comes around. It jjust didn’t seem natural to me. Since then, my diet has changed massively. It took me a while but I did give up those foods. As for alcohol, well, I’ll let you know.
Topics: How it Began, Living With M.S. | No Comments »
True Friends
By Mike Taylor | August 7, 2008
Friends make a massive difference to my life and I truly believe that it’s these friends that have helped me maintain a positive attitude to life.
First of all, if I’m feeling fed up and a bit down, they won’t except that and they’ll give me a hard time about being that way in a way that makes me laugh and smile. Especially when I tellany of them I’m not up to going out. They won’t accept that so out I go, have a great time and I no longer return feeling fed up or down about it.
Let me try and put these friends in some sort of order: John Kirby (one brilliant guy). Guy Gardner, I travelled quite a bit with him and we laughed all the way. Rob lawson; one funny ha-ha guy. Then there’s Collin Smith, he sang at our wedding.
Sarah Mole, I love her to bits.
I have known these people since college about 20 years ago and were still good friends. Chris Vincent lives in L.A. and was my best man at our wedding. Bernard, just one nice guy, Mark Norton is the guy responsible for dragging me out to clubs, giving me a hard time but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Clive Lathey started out as my Osteopath then trained and joined me on many of my swims. Bill K. Evans, I met through Clive and I’ve been great friends ever since.
There are many other people I could put on this list but I promise you that if I wrote this list in 20 years time they’d still be on it. They are incredibly special to me.
Sadly a majority of them live in England and yes, I miss them a lot.
Topics: Living With M.S. | No Comments »
Raising Awareness for M.S. - a Catalina Swim
By Mike Taylor | August 5, 2008
There I am in my new apartment, and I get a call from my friend Chris Vincent who lives in Los Angeles, having heard about the publicity we got with the English Channel swim.
He suggested that we could do better for awareness with M.S. in LA. His idea was to get teams from around the world, each team made up of 5 able-bodied people and an M.S. sufferer from that country. It was sounding good so far.
He told me where he proposed swimming from, an island called Catalina Island to Santa Monica pier, a distance of 32 miles. Yikes! He also went on to tell me, when asked quickly by me, being worried about swimming in the Pacific ocean, “what about sharks!”
Regardless of the distance and the worry about sharks, the swim went ahead. We had in the first year, 5 teams taking place, each team from a different county.
We had sponsors like Tommy Hilfiger and Evian. It was a great swim apart from the fact that America won. England came 5th. The swim was a success.
We did it again the following year, more sponsors, more teams and more media. Sadly for me, America won again. Call me competitive but I went back to England and after making a lot of phone calls, I came our again the following year for the 3rd and final swim with 5 of the fastest open water swimmers England had to offer.
YES, England won convincingly. I guess, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
There were hundreds of people on that beach to greet us including the media and this is where I first saw my wife Helen, but I met her later at the swimmers party in the evening.
After many transatlantic phone calls and transatlantic flights with Helen coming to England and me going to LA, (I nearly forgot, I took Helen for a brilliant few days in Paris) I fell in love.
How romantic of me. It takes me time to warm up but I did eventually fall in love completely with Helen. And her with me. On a beautiful ev ening in London, right by Tower bridge which was lit up, I proposed to her.
No one warns you about how difficult it can be to say 4 words. “Will you marry me” It came out as “wwwwill yyyou mmmmarry mmme”.
No big surprise, she didn’t understand a bloody word I said. My second time, she clearly heard it and I got a resounding yes!
Topics: How it Began, Living With M.S. | No Comments »