Happy Birthday to Me. Today I am thirty nine years old and feel simultaneously ancient and newborn, wise and stupid. I have realised that something in western medicine precludes it from recognising and dealing with my physical problems. The same though is true of me. I have had such a long slow and troubled journey in finding the hurts of my body that they have accumulated and somewhat overtaken me. I am afraid of what my body does and does not do. I am afraid I may soon not be able to walk and may never have the chance to snowboard again.

Today I am spending in the Royal London Hospital Whitechapel. This is not courtesy of the doctors who wished yesterday to discharge me but thge social workers who said yesterday the doctors could not have their way. The doctor who wished to discharge me is Dr Richard Marley, Consultant Hepatologist. Considering I am here for Neuromuscular problems that strikes me as strange. But then I am being discharged because I had the cheek to look at my medical records and complain about the nurse who assaulted me in taking them physically from my possession. Hepatology, being a specialty of blood as I understand it, would account for the vampirish nature of the Hospitals approach perhaps.