Irascible Ink

Irascible Ink is a blog focused on documenting my quest for optimal physical fitness as an adult with cerebral palsy.  I’m trying to carve out the best possible life I can for myself by learning to work with my body, not against it, to explore the far reaches of my potential. I’ve led a pretty fantastic life so far, but I’ve got a huge to-do-list with lots of outstanding items.

So 2010 is going to be all about optimizing my quality of life by increasing my level physical fitness and getting a handle on my long-range medical care. When you’ve got cerebral palsy (CP), or I’d be willing to guess, any disability, people spend a lot of time talking about increasing your level of function. What I’m talking about here is not merely functioning, or solely coping with pain or limitations, but rather learning to take charge of your physical well-being, and your life. Or if you’re the parent of a child with CP, or any other disability, I’m talking about raising your child to feel pride in and ownership of their own body, so that they can demand and receive the best possible medical care, and prepare themselves for the adult adventure.

Things you will find at Irascible Ink:

Just so we can get this out of the way. Here’s a list of things you will find at Irascible Ink:

• An account of my own treatment strategy and workouts;
• Links to information about current treatments for CP, as well as links to information about current research in the field;
• Commentary about the current healthcare debate: why I care and you should too;
• Miscellaneous ramblings about my adventures and misadventures.

Things you won’t find at Irascible Ink:

• Medical advice: I’m not a doctor, I don’t even play one on T.V., so I can only tell you what my experiences have been and about the choices I have made.
• My real name: My friends call me Barry. Yes, I am a woman, called Barry. I do I have a real name, but you won’t find it here because I’ve seen some stories about insurance companies digging around for information on patients through the internet. I already have an on-again, off-again relationship with my insurance company, it doesn’t need to get more complicated. Please, if you know me personally–as probably most of my readers do at this point–just call me Barry or Bee.
• Identifying information about my insurance company, my doctors, my personal trainer, etc. The insurance company? See above. My doctors and trainers? I own my story, not theirs, if they want to implicate themselves by declaring an association with me, that’s up to them.

About me:

• I’m a woman, in my mid-thirties.
• I live in the District of Columbia, not the D.C. Metro Area, but the actual District.
• I have a day job working in web content design/maintenance.

Disclaimers:

• Again, I’m not a doctor. If you have a specific question about a treatment, plan or exercise, you can email me at irascibleink[at]gmail and I’ll try to direct you to a good resource. Before making a medical decision, you should find a professional who knows about these things, not a geek like me who reads a lot and pontificates more.
• I can only speak for myself. People have strong feelings about disability, disability culture, and society’s perceptions of people with disabilities . No doubt someone, somewhere, will take exception to something I say here. That’s great, I welcome disagreements and discussion, if I didn’t I wouldn’t have started a blog. Blogs posts have comments, please use them. Disagree with me at will, as long as posts are not abusive or spam-like, they’ll stay as they are.

What’s with the name?

When I started trying to get a handle on my long-range health care and mobility goals, I noticed almost immediately that it was going to be an uphill battle. Calling insurance companies, doctors, and clinics  invariably made my blood pressure go up, and made me hopping mad. “Irascible” means quick to anger. Irascible Ink sounded cooler than “Irascible Text.”

Note: If you’ve got questions, want to register a complaint, or have suggestions for topics to be covered here, please email me at irascibleink[at]gmail.