Amongst all the other things that you lose through spinal cord injury and paralysis, which is not commonly recognised, is the ability to have a good nights sleep. Like many other SCI’s I suffer from a near constant dull, niggling neuropathic pain and struggle to find a comfortable position to lie in my bed at night. I often wake up after a couple of hours sleep to try and change position and find myself awake again struggling to sleep whilst my mind wanders through a web of mixed thoughts.
There are three rooms that run along the north-facing rear of my flat, my bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen. For the year or so after my release from hospital I slept on an NHS bed with a pressure relieving mattress, the room felt like an extension of a hospital ward but without other patients and nurses. When the bedroom curtains opened in the morning my first view of the new day was a pair of unused, rusty old rotary washing lines on a small patch of grass leading up a slope to a greyish-green never-changing Leylandii hedge a few metres from the bedroom window. After a disturbed nights sleep it was not the best way to start a day.
For nearly twenty years, before I broke my neck, my waking view of the world had been with the rising sun. My stone-built thatched house on the shores of lake Tanganyika was under the canopy of a large fig tree and faced out towards the rugged western escarpment rising up nearly a thousand feet from the water. There were no windows and my mattress was higher than the low wall so that I had an uninterrupted view for nearly 30 miles whilst lying in my bed. My nights sleep under that roof were almost invariably peaceful and calm, no matter what the day had thrown up at me.
At night figs would attract bush-babies and fruit bats coming to feast on the ripe fruit. If I slept without covering my bed with a mosquito net I could feel the whisper of air past my face as rufous mouse-eared bats swept under the grass roof hunting for insects, oblivious to me. A troop of vervet monkeys would often start to wander into my view at dawn, walking and jumping along the branches. Hornbills, noisy red-winged starlings, brilliantly coloured plum-coloured starlings, the occasional purple-crested lourie and a variety of other smaller birds would be flitting around in the lush green foliage during the day.
Over these years living by the lake, off-grid, with no roads, no mains electricity, no mains water, it was more common to see the trails of comets at night than to to see the distant vapour trail of an aircraft during the day. It was a ten mile boat-ride to the small town of Mpulungu and I had become accustomed to a peaceful but busy existence. My life had become embedded in the lake itself and I had developed a deep emotional, physical and I suppose a sort of spiritual intimacy with the place. There were times when I either had to leave the lake itself because of work, or I felt the urge to just get away, but it was always a big relief to get back and I always seemed to sleep better with the sounds of the lake and on most nights a starlit sky.
Adjusting to this new life in the flat meant that when I woke up I would often not open the curtains in the bedroom and would watch early morning tv programmes to delay facing the start of another day of paralysis. In winter it was worse as the sun, even if it decided to shine, would not reach into view. In the summer, when the morning sun was shining it did put a different light on the start of the day and there were times when even the grey of the hedge would start to look attractive.
My mood and overall outlook on life have always been affected by my physical surroundings. I knew from as early as I can remember that I would never be suited to a desk bound job in a sea of brick, concrete and tarmac found in a town or city My mind would never manage to focus properly stuck in a room with no outside view or a view of built-up straight lines. It is not claustrophobia but more a sense of discomfort and restless unease. So gradually I began to work on a plan to make a small garden at the back of the flat so that I could open the curtains and look forward to the start of a day.
The back of the flat slowly transformed into some raised beds with robust wooden sleeper-sides which were the right height so that I could reach the earth from my wheelchair and became a place to grow salad and vegetables. Paving slabs were laid so that the slope in the grassy bank became accessible. I decided that a potting shed was needed to give me some shelter in the winter and to grow seeds, cuttings and to bring plants on. Sitting in there with the radio on, pottering away with pots and plants, trays and seeds brings me a sense of calm.
The final little patch of space was just enough to make a small pond which I can just see from the windows of my bedroom and the kitchen. Next to the pond I have had made-up an area of wooden decking so that I can get my wheelchair alongside the pond and can sit next to it, read a book, have a cold beer or just sit, watch and reflect when the weather is good. The house sparrows and blackbirds that come to drink and bathe seem unafraid, most of the others are not quite so brave unless I sit hidden in the potting shed.
This year was the third since it was built and the life it attracts has slowly been increasing. Frog-spawn appeared again in the early spring and little froglets hide beneath the decking and occasionally pop out near my wheels. I have caught some nefts in a handnet from amongst the waterlilies and pond plants so I know that newts are using the pond. Pondskaters skim across the water surface as if on ice, red damselflies dart and hover around, but this summer’s highlight was watching a southern hawker dragonfly lay her eggs in the damp moss on the oak trunk that dips into one corner of the pond.
Whilst this small pond and the little garden area that has gradually developed over the past few years will never match the grandeur and the scale of the view where I used to wake on another continent thousands of miles away, it has gradually become a place where my spirits and mood are lifted when I open the curtains early in the morning. It has helped me to have a longer and deeper sleep at night and to give my waking mood a boost, almost like taking medication. It takes my mind away from just simply thinking about another day sat in my wheelchair, thoughts are drawn to the outside looking and wondering what is going on out there. So whilst my whole waking view has shrunk on massive scale in size it is uplifting in a different way less dramatic way. One thing is for sure, its way beyond looking out onto a pair of rusty old rotary washing lines.