I am a male now in the autumn of my life, I have serious and life threatening illness but come through the worst and the best. I am mentally, physicaly and sexually scared from a life time of abuse and yes probably because of early intervention in my life it would be fair to say that I am deeply institutionalised. I live my life one day at a time "carpe diem" being my motto.

Beccause of early abuse I have continual pain from old breaks to the bones and jionts that were pulled often out of line.  Due to an acident whilst I was 16 I develped epilepsy which took a long time to stabalise.  Time spent in critical care and hospital during the diagnostic stages took its toll as well as public humiliation in the 1960's consequently lead to a mental breakdown when I was only 17 I spent 2-3 years in psyciatric hospital but to no avail.  It was only very late on in life did I realise I am Bipolar in a mild form and now realise it is at least 75% upto me to learn  how to cope with my life with it, his I am doing through self help groups and regular visits to the shrink.  Because my epilepsy was bad early in the 21st century when I eventualy lived on my own it was decided that I should enter into care via a nursing home 24/7 care system which seems to working out as my major seizures have now stopped, I still see the nuerologist anualy and some of my medication is now being reduced, as it was diagnosed that I may be bi-polar the valproate was reduced at first but increased again some 3 months later.  I had a ruptered anuerism (abdominal aortic) in 2009 I was lucky that I was rushed to hospital had emergency surgery where a intracoronary stent was inserted and I spent 2 months in critical care in a drug induced coma, after discharge it took me 2-3 months to be able to walk and do most of the things for myself.  Later on I had an EMI scan on my left knee where it was revealed that I had very bad arthritis and a split ligament surgery was considered to invasive at that time and was treated with steriod shots into the jionts.  A further EMI scan on my spine revealed the damage done by osteoporosis arounf t3-7 was crompressed fractured and around T5 I had a disc bulge compressing my spinal cord treatment was and is just pain releif as I considered injections directly into the spine to invasive and not worth the risk of ending up in wheelchair for the rest of my life, when in bed if I lay wrongly I get numbness and pins and needles in my feet and leg depandant on which side I am lying.  Recent buiding works to my homme enviroment introduced a lot of ust back into the enviroment this made my breathing bad again and I feared a return of my COPD however this was not the case I was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmaonary fibrosis this is helped with the use of a salbutomol inhaler via a volumatic device.  Finally IN 2010 I was diagnosed with catarcts (probably steriod induced as oposed to age related) in 2012 I had one operation on my left eye which was sucsessful and I am just waiting to have the right one done hopefully this week on the 15th June 2012.