Five Fingers of Steel

Slowly, but surely, I'm being drawn into the disability activist scene. Which is vaguely amusing as I don't consider myself disabled, tho' the world and it's mother disagrees.

Sharing my experience of Stroke is one thing, but activism is a different kettle of fish. The politics for one is a total turn off, but unavoidable. Darn it. But some things catch your attention nonetheless.

I'm a regular helper-outer on the Stroke Association. People who ask questions and share their experience there are often some of the most vulnerable. It is brain damage, after all, to be blunt.

Now then, I have some experience of marketing, product placement and people management, and other forms of evangelism. But nothing gets my goat more than when someone pushes products means and methods on people who are vulnerable.

"Use this machine or do this that or another, and you like me will walk 4 miles" Hope the department and work and pensions don't read that.

"Exercise will gets bits working again". Bugger off. Lets get this straight. Stroke affects limbs. They cramp, curl up, often become paralysed to various degrees, because the arm, leg, breathing and digestive system other bits of the body are in a complex symbiosis.

BUT. And this is what the uninformed miss. A stroke is a control centre malfunction. It isn't the body part that's the problem. The bit that runs it is. You can shove a shed load of devices and exercises at a stroke knackered limb.

The best you can do is, over months and often over years is Train The Brain, to some extent. Which is a bit more complex and requires on hell of a lot more application than a professional weight lifter.

Meanwhile, if you can get hold of a short story by a world renowned sci-fi writer, Isaac Asimov, called "Five Fingers Of Steel", I recommend you read it.