When I was in the rehabilitation hospital in the winter of 2025, one of my favourite nurses said, as she removed my night-bag one frosty morning, “O, I wish I had a catheter – you don’t need to get out of bed during the night when it’s freezing!’”

I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t mocking me; she was trying to make me feel less bad about having to be hooked up to a plastic sac, which would do its best to extract up to two litres of alarmingly orange urine from me as I slumbered under morphine. But of course, anyone in my position would give their little finger – on both hands – to be able to get out of bed, even in the middle of the coldest night of the century, and use a toilet – even a dirty one! – like an ordinary human being. She was just trying to make me feel better, but failing dismally. 

I’ve experienced quite a bit of this since I became disabled in the Christmas week of 2024, and it’s taken me some time to take such encouragement in the way it’s intended; those things people say to “Wheelchair Warriors” to make us feel less freakish.

I feel gratitude that I’m a paraplegic and can move my upper........

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