JustBeingCP

It is Friday the 1st of March, 2024 and for me that only means one thing it is time to celebrate Cerebral Palsy for the next 31 days.

As many of you, my readers and followers will know I was born at 25 weeks (15 weeks early) weighing just half a bag of sugar. This led to me spending the first 12 weeks of my life in the special baby unit at Hereford County Hospital.

I was transferred to the children’s hospital in Birmingham during that time where I was fitted with VP Shunt to help excess fluid drain away from my brain . I will open up about Hydrocephalus in the second of four blogs about Cerebral Palsy that will be released on Friday march the 8th.

My Cerebral Palsy affects both legs and my left arm meaning that I use a wheelchair to help me navigate daily life, which can be very challenging at times. My condition has never defined me as an individual and I have gone to achieve some incredible things in my 27 years.

I have been given the opportunities to carry both the Paralympic flame on horseback in Hereford as a 16 year old in 2012 and the Queen’s Baton as a 26 year old in 2022 when it was on route to Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium for the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony.

I wanted to show the next generation of disabled young people living with Cerebral Palsy that they can achieve their goals despite living with the condition. I hope that my next 4 blogs including this one will help inspire the pubic to understand a bit more about what people like myself are living with on a daily basis.

I believe that a lot of us with the condition face abuse because those around us don’t necessarily understand why we behave in a certain way and this has to stop. When it comes to the general public learning more about CP (Cerebral Palsy) I have three tips.

Tip 1: Do some research about what Cerebral Palsy is and how it affects us as a population, everyone with it is different because there are a lot of variations of the condition.

Tip 2: Feel free to approach us whilst we are out and about in public as the majority of us will be happy to sit for a few minutes and have a chat about our awesome condition.

Tip 3: Contact organisations like Scope and CP Teens UK who will be happy to answer any questions that you might have about the condition.

I urge you to spend the next couple of weeks educating yourself about the condition because you might actually learn something. Here is the link to the National Health Service’s page on Cerebral Palsy: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cerebral-palsy/ that you might find useful,

I know that is quite a short blog but I wanted to use it as a way to kickstart the conversation about CP (Cerebral Palsy) and the condition that it is.

If you found today’s blog interesting and informative then why not sign up to my blog and receive the next three instalments of my four part series on the condition direct to your inbox once they have been published.

Subscribe Here: https://just-being-cp.co.uk/.

I would like to end by taking the opportunity to thank each and everyone of you, my readers and followers who continually take time out of your busy schedules to read my blogs every week.

Cam